Something Worth Fighting For
by CharmedBec
Summary: "Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?" Some choice words from a family member spur Lindsay Monroe into action over her increasingly shaky relationship with a certain Danny Messer...
1. Intervention

**SOMETHING WORTH FIGHTING FOR**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: '**_Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?' Some choice words from a family member spur Lindsay Monroe into action over her increasingly shaky relationship with a certain Danny Messer..._

**Notes: **Hi! Was sorting through my old computer back-ups the other day and came across some unfinished stories that I started experimenting with just before the inspiration for 'What Might Have Been' struck. They were all Season Four-based, but this particular one caught my eye because it was a little bit different to the rest. Rather than dealing with the aftermath of Danny sleeping with Rikki, it is set before it happens. I liked what I'd written and it captured my muse so I decided to finish it off. It's sort of a 'What If?' and it's split into a number of mini-episodes. Not quite sure how many just yet, but it's not going to be an epic – I'm guessing somewhere between four and six chapters.

If you're reading 'Hold Me Now', you'll have already met Lindsay's sister, Mel. This story contains an early incarnation of her – she's a psychologist in this story rather than a doctor, but other than that, it's essentially the same character.

Anyway, I think that's enough introduction, don't you? Time for Episode 1…

**OOOOOO**

**Episode 1: Intervention**

'_Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?'_

With her elder sister Melanie's words still ringing in her ears, Lindsay Monroe headed up the steps from the subway station and out onto the busy street above. Taking a sharp turn to the right, she started out on the short, three-block journey to her intended destination.

The emotional phone-call with her sibling – during which she'd finally confessed all that had been troubling her for the past few weeks – had been the impetus that had galvanised her into this belated action. Mel was right - she could either sit back and let it happen, or she could do something about it before it was too late. The latent fear that it was already just that made her feel sick to the stomach, but she pushed it aside in favour of a more positive outlook on the situation.

It had been a horrible couple of months so far, but she wasn't ready to give up the fight just yet. She'd been way too passive up until now, the fear of doing or saying the wrong thing causing her to hold back the storm of emotion that had been simmering, unspoken, inside of her for far too long. Under the circumstances, she felt as if she wasn't entitled to feel this way, that her pain was nothing compared to that of the others involved in this tragedy. But what she felt was real - she hadn't cried herself to sleep on a regular basis over the last few weeks for nothing. It was time that her part in this was properly acknowledged by all concerned.

A few short weeks ago, she could have never imagined what was about to befall her. In a split second instant, everything had changed. The outward ripples from that single moment in time had ricocheted throughout every aspect of her life and left devastation in its wake. Lindsay was still a little shell-shocked by it all. It was a storm that had arrived out of nowhere, a tornado that had whipped her up in its whirlwind and left her battered and bruised at the side of the road.

How could she have known that it would come to this? That she'd be fighting for the affection of the one person she thought she could trust above all others? That she'd be questioning his integrity, his honour, as well as his commitment to the relationship that she had believed to be so happy? A little boy's tragic death shouldn't have changed that, but it had. She no longer knew where she stood. She no longer knew whether she was even a part of this at all. Danny had shut her out of his life so effectively that sometimes she doubted whether what they had together was even real.

It broke her heart, but he was going through hell and she hadn't wanted to make it worse. So she'd accepted, stepped back, and given him some space to sort his head out. The only problem was, it was slowly killing her and she couldn't take it anymore. She needed him to acknowledge that this was affecting her too, that even though her pain couldn't equal his or Rikki's, it was nonetheless a factor that deserved consideration.

Danny's growing connection with Rikki Sandoval was what scared her the most. She'd met Ruben's Mom a couple of times before this, but she'd never once considered her a threat. She was just a neighbour from across the hall, someone Danny shared a casual acquaintance with because he'd befriended her son. But now… now the two of them had locked themselves away in their own private world of shared grief. It was a bubble that no-one could penetrate because, as far as they were concerned, nobody else could understand what they were going through.

It hadn't been an issue in the beginning. At first, Rikki had pushed away all Danny's attempts to console her, making his guilt worse but maintaining the emotional distance between the two of them. But then she'd done a complete u-turn, deciding that he was the only one who could lessen her pain. Danny had been sucked in before Lindsay had even realised what was happening. His need to make up for the tragedy he believed to be his fault had driven him to make himself over as Rikki's knight in shining armour, despite the consequences to everything and everyone else in his life.

It was emotional blackmail, pure and simple, but it wasn't the calculated kind. In spite of everything, Lindsay could be objective enough to see that Rikki didn't really know what she was doing. She was just reaching out and grabbing hold of the nearest life-buoy in the shifting sea of her storm-wrecked life. But that life-buoy just happened to be Lindsay's boyfriend and he was gradually slipping through her own fingers as a result.

Danny and Rikki's relationship had become increasingly insular in recent weeks and that had only served to exacerbate the situation. Whenever Lindsay made an attempt to spend some quality time with her partner, he was always too busy, had something else to do. Translation – Rikki needed him and he wasn't going to let her down, not even for his endlessly patient girlfriend. She hated herself for thinking it, but she was beginning to suspect that his relationship with the bereaved mother was starting to move beyond the purely platonic.

Flack had not calmed her fears in this respect. The dark-haired police detective was about the only person Danny would confide in right now and when she'd questioned him about the situation with Rikki, he'd been deliberately evasive. It had sent her imagination into overdrive. She'd been physically sick at the thought of the two of them together and the sobs that had wracked through her body had been almost painful in their intensity.

It was then that she'd realised the undeniable truth. She loved him, she loved him beyond anything she'd ever felt for any other man in her life. He was 'the one' if ever there was such a thing and she was about to lose him. Their relationship up until now had been fun and spontaneous. He'd been her best friend and her lover all rolled into one. It had been everything she ever wanted so it had never occurred to her to ask for more. She hadn't known that they were living on borrowed time. If she had, maybe she would have expected more from him.

Like they'd always had done though, they'd been taking things slowly, one baby step at a time. The commitment, the expectations for the future - that would come later. At that particular moment in time, they were simply having fun and getting to know each other on a more intimate footing. They were letting things progress at their own pace because they had all the time in the world for happily-ever-afters.

You never knew what you had until it was gone. It was a cliché but it was the true. Lindsay hadn't known. Not back then. And now? Now she couldn't escape from the painful reality of what she could lose. For a few days, she'd drowned in the agonizing inevitability of it all, but a tearful phone-call to her sister and a few pieces of pointed advice had pulled her back from the brink.

"Lindsay, you have a right to what you feel," Melanie had told her, "Just because she's lost her son doesn't mean it should all be about her. I have the greatest sympathy for her – being a mother myself, I can imagine the hell she's going through right now – but the point is, Danny is your boyfriend and his priority should be you. I'm not saying that he shouldn't help or support her, but there has to be some balance. You have to let him know how much he's hurting you. I know you – sometimes you're stoic to the point of appearing unfeeling. He probably has no idea what he's putting you through."

"But what if it's too late? What if he and Rikki…," she'd trailed off unable to say the words.

"Do you honestly believe that?"

"I don't know, Mel! A few weeks ago, I would never have believed Danny capable of something like that. But now? Now, I just don't know."

"Then you have to ask him. I know it's painful but surely it's better to know the truth. And if it has gone that far then I guess you have to decide whether you can forgive him or not. If he'd cheated on you under normal circumstances, I'd be telling you to walk away and save yourself the bother. Leopards don't change their spots in my experience. But these aren't normal circumstances, are they? If Danny feels as responsible as you say he does then maybe he's gotten himself so wrapped up in his guilt and pain that he can't see beyond it to anything else."

"Spoken like a true psychologist."

"Maybe – but I think you of all people should know about the pull of survivor's guilt. It's a dangerous cycle and he needs to be jolted out of it before it gets out of hand. Right now, you're just sitting back and letting it happen. Force him to confront the truth of what he's doing to you and then maybe he can finally find some proper perspective on it all."

"I guess," Lindsay agreed somewhat dubiously.

"And I mean the truth, Lindsay, okay? It wouldn't hurt to let those tears you've been holding back flow a little. Men have an inherent fear of crying women. It'll freak him out big time."

Lindsay laughed in spite of herself. "Isn't that kind of manipulative?"

"Only if the tears aren't genuine and yours are."

"But I…"

"How many times have you locked yourself away somewhere private and sobbed your heart out over him recently?"

Lindsay let out a resigned sigh at her sister's on target insight. "I think you know me too well, Mel," she complained.

"I'm your big sister. It's my job. I know how you insulate everything, but, honey, that's not going to work with this. You've got to be more open about the way you feel. He's not a mind-reader, you know. And right now, with what he's going through, he's probably not all that perceptive about how this is affecting you either."

Lindsay closed her eyes as a single tear escaped to run down her cheek. "It's hard."

"I know, but you have to do it. Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?"

Back in the present, Lindsay stood on the sidewalk and looked up at Danny's apartment building. She'd made her decision. She was going to fight. She just wasn't sure how best to go about it…

**OOOOOO**

_**A couple of hours earlier, Danny's apartment…**_

"Are you decent yet?" Don Flack asked in strident, no-nonsense tones.

At the grumbled humph of confirmation, he stepped into the centre of the archway that led through into the bedroom. Danny stood in front of the closet, dressed in a pair of sweatpants, but otherwise bare-foot and bare-chested. Don couldn't say he'd ever spent that much time studying his friend's body but it only took a cursory glance to figure out that Danny had shed too much weight in recent weeks. He'd lost a good proportion of his normal muscle tone and his ribs were slightly too prominent under the paleness of his skin.

Don moved further into the room. "Well, at least you no longer stink like last week's garbage," he observed acidly.

"Is there a point to this?" Danny demanded irritably, the irrational anger that was simmering just below the surface threatening to break free. He impatiently tugged a blue NYPD t-shirt down over his head, mussing up his hair which was still damp from the shower that Flack had dragooned him into taking fifteen minutes earlier.

Don leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. "Call it an intervention," he said, which to all intents and purposes was exactly what it was.

He'd watched his friend go to hell and back over the last few weeks, and, for the most part, had felt helpless to do anything about it. After Ruben's death, Danny had closed himself off from everything that had previously mattered to him, locking himself away in a prison of his own making to serve out his penance for a crime that he didn't commit. His days now consisted of work, very little food or sleep, and being on hand to support Rikki whenever she needed it. That was Danny's life now, and it wasn't nearly enough to sustain a healthy mind, body and spirit.

What made it worse was that he was dragging other people down with him. Flack was still haunted by the stricken look that he'd been forced to witness on Lindsay's face a few days before. She'd asked him some subtle but probing questions about Danny's relationship with Rikki, and, try as he might; he hadn't been able to reassure her that her fears were unfounded. He didn't _think_ there was anything untoward going on, but he couldn't be absolutely sure. He couldn't be sure of anything where Danny was concerned these days.

So, when Danny had mentioned the fact that Rikki would be out of town visiting her brother for a couple of days, he'd jumped at the opportunity to drag his friend – albeit kicking and screaming - back out into the light of day. It wouldn't have been possible at any other time – Rikki was a convenient excuse and one that was difficult to argue with under the circumstances. The fact remained, the woman had just lost her only child and she needed support in coming to terms with that. Don wasn't sure that Danny was the best person to give it, but it would be an exercise in futility to try and convince him of that so he'd reluctantly had to leave the thorny issue alone.

"I thought we'd go shoot some hoops for a while, then maybe grab a slice and take in a movie or something. Then I figured we could call up Lindsay and Angell - treat them to dinner and a club. Linds likes to dance, right?"

He'd debated which way to approach this for hours, finally deciding that the best thing to do was to simply ignore the obvious and act as if everything were normal. He'd already called Angell the night before to rope her into his scheme, and he didn't think Lindsay would turn down the invitation. She'd been desperate to spend some time alone with Danny for weeks now. If they made it a double date then it would take some of the pressure off.

Danny's response was a supremely non-committal "Yeah, I guess," but it was better than nothing at least.

"That's the plan then," Flack decided. He grabbed the sports bag sitting by the chest of drawers and threw it in his friend's direction. "Come on. You owe me a rematch and this time you're going down, Danny boy."

**OOOOOO**

Her nerves causing her heart to hammer wildly in her chest, Lindsay walked slowly down the corridor to the door of Danny's apartment. She hesitated for a moment before she lifted her hand to knock on the painted wood.

No answer. She knocked again, a little more insistently this time. Still no answer. He was probably out somewhere with Rikki, she thought miserably. She'd screwed up her courage to come here and confront him, and now he wasn't even home. She turned away dejectedly.

"You looking for Danny, honey?" a voice asked from behind her.

Lindsay turned to be confronted by a grey-haired woman in her late-sixties. One of Danny's other neighbours – she wracked her brains for a name – Mrs Kowalski that was it. A widow of more than twenty years, Danny claimed that she lived with around a dozen cats for company. Of course, it was entirely possible that he was joking about that. Whatever the truth though, she was apparently the resident busy-body. Lindsay bet she was having a field-day with this. An untimely death and a growing love triangle right on her doorstep. She must be in gossip heaven.

"Yes," she said politely. "Looks like I missed him, huh?"

"He left a while ago with that cop buddy of his. Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome – you know - the one with the come-to-bed eyes?"

Lindsay smiled at the description. Apparently you were never too old to appreciate good genes. "You mean Flack?" she said.

"Mmm – said something about going to shoot some hoops."

"Ok, thank you." Lindsay started to turn away but she wasn't quick enough.

"Tragic about the Sandoval boy, wasn't it?"

Lindsay froze in her tracks. "Yes," she managed over the sudden lump in her throat.

"Danny's been a tower of strength for his poor mother, you know."

Lindsay bit her lip. "He's a good guy."

"Not seen you around much lately."

The remark was off-hand but there was no mistaking the inference. Lindsay drew in her last reserves of strength and forced herself to remain calm. "No, well, things have been busy for both of us."

"Guess you'll be glad to get him to yourself for a while, huh? What with young Rikki away visiting her brother in Maine for a few days an' all?"

Lindsay tried not to let her reaction to this news show, but she wasn't sure she entirely succeeded. She was certain that Mrs Kowalski's eyes narrowed with glee at being able to impart this hitherto unknown information.

"It'll be good to spend some time together," she agreed mildly. She forced a smile. "Anyway, nice to speak to you again, Mrs Kowalski, but I should get going. I have a few errands to run."

Outside, she drew in several calming breaths as her mind absorbed what she'd just learned. Danny wouldn't be able to use Rikki as an excuse to avoid her now. One way or another, she'd find out where they stood. She started back towards the subway station, and then stopped and headed in the opposite direction. Mrs Kowalski had said that the two men had gone to shoot some hoops and she knew where they usually played. She'd sat and watched them any number of times. Danny had suggested she got herself a cheerleading outfit once, but had thought better of it when she'd shot daggers at him.

"That means I'm not getting any tonight," he'd told Flack mournfully.

Lindsay felt tears well in her eyes as she remembered that playful jest. He never teased her like that anymore. It was a miracle if he spoke more than a few words to her these days. He'd forgotten her birthday the other week and what's more…

'Stop!' she inwardly admonished herself. 'Stop playing the victim. You deserve better than that. You are not going to let him get away with any lame excuses this time around, all right? He's gonna hear what you have to say whether he likes it or not.'

Her resolve strengthened, she quickened her walk and headed determinedly in the direction of the outdoor basketball court a couple of blocks away...

_**To be continued…**_

**AN2:** _I think I've recycled the odd line of this into some of my other posted stories. They fit those particular works too, but this is the context in which I originally wrote them so I've decided to leave them as is and not attempt to change things. _

_Anyway, hope you liked it - CharmedBec x_


	2. Ultimatum

**SOMETHING WORTH FIGHTING FOR**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: "**_Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?" Some choice words from a family member spur Lindsay Monroe into action over her increasingly shaky relationship with a certain Danny Messer._

**Notes: **Hi! New episode for you. The aim is to post one episode a week, although I can't guarantee that will definitely happen – it largely depends on my fickle muse! Anyway, more Author's notes at the end, but for now, on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

**Episode 2: Ultimatum**

You were occasionally able to forget that Danny Messer used to be a professional athlete, Donald Flack Jnr mused resignedly, but at times like these it was unfortunately all too obvious. Determined focus and competitive aggression had fused together into a well-oiled machine that was beating the ill-fated detective into the ground with ruthless efficiency – and this was in spite of the fact that he would normally be considered fit by most modern-day standards.

Still, it was a healthier way for Danny to work out his issues than the dubious methods he'd been employing so far. Flack just hoped it would be enough to get him to wake up and smell the roses before it was too late. Lindsay Monroe may not have been the kind of woman that he might have expected his long-time friend to go for, but she'd turned out to be perfect for him nonetheless. She was sparky and fun and she bantered with the best of them – a factor most definitely in her favour as far as Flack was concerned.

She may seem fragile and tiny on the outside, you see, but Don knew that she had nerves of steel and was in possession of a fierce intelligence within. Plus, she loved Messer's dumb ass, anybody with any brains could see that. The raw pain in her eyes at being repeatedly brushed aside was not a comfortable thing to witness, and it made him want to bash his friend's head against a brick-wall and yell 'What the hell do you think you're doing, you insensitive jerk?'

But telling Messer what he _should_ do only made him more obstinate. You suggested one thing and he would more than likely do the opposite. Flack had tried to broach the subject with him several times over the past couple of weeks, but his friend had remained stubbornly oblivious. He didn't see the problem – or more accurately, he refused to – he was doing what he had to do as a friend and neighbour and that was it. Nothing else mattered.

Except something else did – Don knew it, and he was pretty sure that Danny did too deep down. Guilt and grief were doing a number on his head at the moment though, and because of that he could end up losing something infinitely precious to him. Of course Lindsay wasn't helping matters either – she was far too accepting of the situation. All of her concern was for Danny regardless of the detrimental consequences to herself. She was letting him get away with treating her like crap when really she should be calling him on it.

"Okay – time out!" Flack groaned; calling a halt to proceedings before his knees buckled under him from a combination of physical and mental stress.

"This is supposed to be a friendly game of basketball not murder on asphalt," he complained after he'd drained almost an entire bottle of water to replace the fluids he'd lost through a combination of hard graft and sweat.

Danny shot him a tight reluctant grin, acknowledging the point. "I've got some kinks to work out," he said gruffly.

"No kidding, terminator!" Flack said expansively. "I'm discovering muscles I never knew I had. Have some mercy on us amateurs why don't ya?"

Danny couldn't quite bring himself to laugh, but the vigorous exercise had helped to release some of the pent-up tension inside. He felt better even if he didn't want to admit it. His cell phone beeped and he reached into his sports bag to retrieve it. Rikki – the message was short but succinct.

'_Families – they try 2 hard'_

He tapped out a reply.

'_They care, cut them some slack'_

Another beep and_ 'Is it wrong 2 want 2 b back in NYC?'_

He hesitated. What was he supposed to say to that? That he wanted her back here too? He wasn't actually sure that he did. He was without the one person he felt properly understood what he was going through, but he didn't feel as if the walls were closing in on him quite so much. He thought about it for a moment before settling on a fairly innocuous _'Stay strong, it's only 4 a few days'_

'_Ur right. It's just hard sometimes. Can I call u 2nite 2 talk?'_

Remembering what Flack had said about dinner with Lindsay and Angell, he hedged his bets. _'Might b out. Will answer if I can'_

'_OK. Speak 2 u soon x'_

He felt a twist of remorse in his gut at his evasion. He really ought to answer her call, he owed her that much at least - except that he was tired, tired and emotionally wrung out. He just wanted some peace, a little bit of respite from the constant guilt gnawing away at his insides, hollowing him out into a blank, empty shell of the vibrant individual he used to be.

"I think we've got company," Flack commented from beside him, and Danny looked up to see Lindsay approaching, her head bowed but her stride purposeful.

As usual her presence immediately put him on edge. He didn't know why he felt that way around her. She was nothing but sympathetic to his plight, but he felt suffocated by her compassion even so. It made him want to turn and run in the opposite direction as fast as he could. She wanted something from him that he wasn't able to give. He didn't want to talk about it. He wasn't ready to forgive himself for what had happened; he needed to wallow in the guilt. It was what he deserved after all. Lindsay's desire to comfort him was something that he'd neither asked for, nor needed. Why couldn't she understand that and just leave it alone?

Now that she was here, Lindsay felt her courage desert her with indecent haste. Could she really confront Danny in public? With Flack on hand to witness every mortifying word? She raised her gaze from its contemplation of the sidewalk and was left winded by the rigid wariness in her boyfriend's stance as she approached. He didn't want her there; that much was obvious. She knew he'd be horribly flippant with her too, his attitude so agonisingly casual that she'd just want to burst into tears and flee.

I mean what was the excuse he'd come up with for forgetting her birthday the other week? That men only remembered things like sports statistics and steak sides? He hadn't once expressed any real regret over his omission and she knew in her heart-of-hearts that he wasn't that unfeeling. She wanted to believe it was a defence mechanism, but was afraid it was more like a brush-off. She'd served her purpose and now she was surplus to requirements. The lovely and tragic Rikki would be fulfilling his needs from now on. She'd outlived her welcome both in his life and in his bed.

"Hey!" she said in a tremulous tone, hating herself for sounding so horribly weak.

"Hey!" Flack said jovially, stepping in to rescue her from ritual humiliation. "Nice timing. We were planning to call you later. We were thinking – you and Angell, me and Messer – dinner and a club tonight? What do you reckon?"

"Sounds good," she said, forcing a smile before she looked over at Danny. "I went to your place, but you weren't in," she told him, "Your neighbour – Mrs Kowalski? She told me that you'd gone out to shoot some hoops so I figured you might have headed here."

"So I guess now you've found me," Danny responded flatly.

Lindsay felt the now familiar stab of pain along with a flash of rather more constructive anger. "Well, that's debatable, isn't it?" she shot back bitterly.

Danny blinked as Flack inwardly cheered her on.

"What's that supposed to mean?" the former demanded.

"Just that you're not all here, are you, Danny?" She bit her lip and looked down at her feet. "Maybe you'd rather be in Maine."

Danny defensively crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't know why you'd think that."

She shot him a look filled with venom. "I have eyes in my head, don't I?"

"That isn't…" he began to protest, but she cut him off before he could go any further.

"Fair?" she queried. "No, but life isn't, is it? As I'm discovering to my cost."

"This has nothing to do with you, Lindsay," Danny told her.

She gazed at him with sad eyes. "I know," she said quietly, "The truth is, I don't rate very high in your priorities anymore, do I?"

He shook his head with unjustified exasperation. "That isn't true."

"No?" she snapped, her eyes flashing fire and ice. "Well, damn well prove it then!"

He reeled back from the verbal daggers aimed in his direction. "What?"

Lindsay glanced over at Flack, who nodded at her encouragingly. "Text me the time and place," she told him curtly, and then turned her attention back to her stubbornly taciturn boyfriend.

"It's your choice, Danny," she said, "If what you say is true - that you do still care about me and how I feel, then get off your ass and prove it, huh?"

With that, she turned on her heel and stalked off, her head held high even though she knew the tears would fall the moment she was out of sight.

Danny stared after her retreating form in stunned disbelief. "Did she just give me a goddamn ultimatum?" he demanded irritably.

"I believe she did, yeah," Flack confirmed with nod. He folded his arms across his chest and fixed his friend with a pointed stare. "Do me a favour and don't blow it, huh? I can personally guarantee you'll regret it if you do."

**OOOOOO**

Even though she was inwardly kicking herself for letting her insecurities get the better of her, Lindsay spent an inordinate amount of time getting ready that evening. She hadn't even put this much effort into choosing her outfit for her and Danny's first official date. She wanted to show him what he was missing however. She wanted him to look at her and realise what a bonehead he was being neglecting her the way he was.

Why was she even putting herself through this though? Was he really worth the effort? The man she'd fallen in love was, but the person he'd become recently… well, she ought to kick his sorry ass to the kerb without a second thought. But wasn't that what tonight was all about - a final attempt to draw out the real Danny whoever he might be? If he didn't step up to the plate, then she'd know that he didn't feel the same way about her as she did about him. She'd have to accept that it was time to call it quits and move on with her life.

Her sister's earlier words still nagged at her however. She hadn't been honest with Danny about how she felt. Oh, she'd given him a little hint of it this morning, but she'd not told him how much she hurt inside, how lonely she felt - not to mention how crazily in love with him she was. He was breaking her heart, but he hadn't a clue what he was doing to her. For all she knew, he simply saw her as a friend with benefits and assumed she felt the same about him. What was wrong with her stepping aside while he comforted his neighbour in every way possible if that were the case therefore? It wasn't as if they'd made any real commitment to each other, was it?

That thought made her both mad at him and angry at herself for having so little self-respect. He was supposed to be her friend and friends just didn't treat each other that way. She'd risked her career by getting involved with him, and he'd done the same for her. Surely that meant that what they had was something worth fighting for?

Hopefully with Rikki away he'd make more of an effort tonight, not be so standoffish towards her, and maybe, just maybe, give her a tiny sliver of the one-on-one attention that she craved from him. Perhaps afterwards they could go back to his place - or hers if not - and talk. _Really_ talk that was, about the things that truly mattered, about their relationship and where it was going.

A few hours later and she was beginning to think she was wasting her time. Danny was a lot more animated than he had been in recent weeks, but he was still giving her the proverbial cold shoulder. He, Angell and Flack were carrying most of the conversation while she sat there like a spare wheel. It was almost as if he was mad at her for having the audacity to demand some of his precious attention. Apparently she was supposed to be a martyr to the cause and stand aside while another woman pushed her out of the nest. After all, said woman had lost her only child and could therefore claim the greater need.

Halfway through dinner, Danny's cell phone rang and he reached in his shirt pocket to answer it. "Sorry, I've got to take this," he said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet.

He was gone in seconds, but not before Lindsay had had the time to see the name on the blinking display – Rikki - what a surprise! He probably had a special ringtone for her she was so damn important to him. She sat there pushing the food around on her plate and thinking similar ugly thoughts until finally she could take it no longer.

"Excuse me," she said curtly to her companions and rose abruptly to her feet.

Jessica Angell shot a look at Flack after she'd gone. "He's _so_ going to get it – I know a mad-as-hell woman when I see one."

"Well good – he needs a decent kick up the ass."

"I think she put on her steel-capped boots especially," Jessica quipped, making Flack laugh in spite of the seriousness of the brewing situation between their once-happy friends.

Lindsay paused in the doorway of the restaurant to observe Danny as he paced the sidewalk outside with his cell phone cupped reverentially to his ear. She was spitting mad. She wanted to grab the phone out of his hand and toss it into the gutter – and then grind her heel into it for good measure. She didn't do it though – in spite of the turmoil roiling nastily in her belly, she knew that wasn't the right way to handle the situation. She wanted him to understand how she felt and yelling at him wasn't going to achieve that, however satisfying it might be to vent her hurt and anger that way. Ultimately, such behaviour would only put him on the defensive though, and god knows he was enough of a brick-wall around her already.

Pushing her hair back from her face, she started down the steps but found herself suddenly blindsided when she heard the gentleness in his tone as he spoke into the phone. She couldn't make out the actual words, but she could hear the deep compassion and the infinite care in them. Something inside of her broke at that and she sank down onto the bottom step and buried her face in her knees, praying to god to give her the strength to stay strong throughout the painful conversation to come.

"Lindsay?"

She raised her head to find Danny standing over her, a quizzical look on his handsome face as he looked down upon her hunched-up form. His cell was still clutched in his hand, but he had mercifully ended the phone-call that he'd abandoned her to take.

"Will she call again?" she asked him, her voice not much more than a raspy whisper.

Danny frowned. "Huh?" he said, and then looked down at the phone in his hand. "Oh no, I don't think so. Not tonight anyway."

"But you'd answer it if she did," Lindsay said, her words a statement rather than a question, "Even if I asked you not to." She dropped her gaze, blinking back the tears that stung the backs of her eyelids. "I don't even warrant one evening of your undivided attention, do I?"

Danny sighed. "What the hell is all this about, Lindsay?" he demanded exasperatedly. "You've been in a mood with me all day."

"Rikki needs you so you have to be there for her."

"Yeah - so?"

His tone was aggressively belligerent and her eyes brimmed in response. "What you don't seem to get," she told him, her breath hitching in her throat, "What you don't seem to understand is that I need you too, Danny. _I_ need you too, god dammit!"

"Since when did I suggest that you didn't?" he shot back.

His indifferent response infuriated her. "Tell me something, Danny - do you want this?" she demanded hotly as she rose to her feet to confront him. "I mean do you _really _want this? You and me? Together? Do you want it, or am I just making a complete fool of myself here? I know we agreed we'd take it slow, keep things light, but I thought you understood, I thought you knew that I wouldn't have gotten involved with you if I didn't see it eventually going somewhere."

Danny sighed. "This isn't about us, Lindsay," he claimed in a weary tone.

"Yes it is, you patronising jerk!" she spat furiously at him, swiping angrily at the tears that had leaked unbidden from her eyes to run down her cheeks.

"You have no idea, do you?" she demanded. "What it's been like for me these past few weeks? You and her - you're not the only ones who are hurting, Danny. I feel so alone – it's like one minute you were there beside me and the next you were gone. I lost my best friend and my lover with no warning whatsoever. You barely even look me in the eye anymore, do you know that? And you hardly ever make the effort to spend any time with me. I feel like I'm pestering you unreasonably for attention, but when was the last time we spent an evening together, huh? When was the last time we made love? What do you expect me to do? Just sit here like a good girl and not complain while you cosy up with someone else?"

She shook her head. "Whatever else - you owe me some respect, Danny. I know the circumstances are difficult, but this is _not _okay, you hear me? The way you're treating me, it's not okay, not by any stretch of the imagination…"

She whirled away then as her voice broke and the pain of rejection finally became too much. Scrubbing at the tears streaming down her cheeks, she sucked in a few deep breaths and tried to regain some semblance of control over her see-sawing emotions. When she turned back to face him, he was just standing there on the sidewalk, looking bewildered and utterly baffled by her outburst.

"Are you sleeping with her?" she asked then, her voice deceptively calm.

He flinched as if she'd shot an arrow into him. "W-what?"

"It's a legitimate question, isn't it? You spend all of your free time with another woman. You show no interest in me whatsoever. It isn't all that much of a leap to think you might be getting your kicks elsewhere is it?"

He shook his head as if he couldn't quite believe what she was asking. "I am not sleeping with her," he insisted.

She drew in a shuddering breath and rubbed agitatedly at her forehead. "Maybe not," she acknowledged, "But I think if she asked you to, you'd probably give her what she wanted, and I can't handle that, Danny. I just can't…"

Closing her eyes, she tried her best to stay in control. She didn't think she could look at him, but she knew the words had to be spoken. "Don't you get it? I've fallen in love with you, but if you don't see a future for us, if you can't be mine exclusively then I have to walk away. And I have to do it before I'm forced to give up the job I love as well deal with losing you. Right now I can step back - I can move on and still manage to work with you in spite of everything that's happened between us. This continues for much longer and I don't think I'll have the strength."

She opened her eyes then and was somewhat gratified to see the pole-axed expression on his face that her confession had induced. It gave her the necessary impetus to continue. "It's make or break time, Danny," she warned him. "I know you're going through a rough time right now, but that isn't an excuse for casting me aside this way. There has to be some balance, it can't all be about her. I understand why you have to support her, I swear I do, but I need to know that I'm your number one priority when all is said and done. I need to know that if it came to a choice, you'd choose me. Is that really too much to ask?"

"You don't understand," Danny mumbled ineffectually, his gaze on his feet. He felt like he'd had a bucket of ice-water dumped on his head and he was still trying to process all the conflicting thoughts and feelings that were whirling around inside his overtaxed brain.

"You see that's where you couldn't be more wrong!" Lindsay cried; the injustices in that statement erupting from her like molten lava from a volcano. "If anyone knows what it's like to have someone you care about gunned down in front of you and be helpless to do anything about it, it's me. You sat there in that court-room in Montana - you _know_ what I went through. I've stood in the middle of a diner surrounded by a sea of dead bodies and hated myself for being alive, for not being able to prevent such futile and unnecessary deaths. Rikki is not the only one who understands, Danny. _I_ understand - I probably understand more than anyone else you know. And stupid, naive me thought that meant I'd be the person you'd choose to help you through this, but clearly you had other ideas. Apparently I'm not good enough. It would seem I'm okay for a bit of fun between the sheets, but anything more meaningful than that then it's adios, Miss Monroe, without even a backward glance."

"Lindsay, no, look…"

Belatedly shaking off his shocked stupor, Danny reached out instinctively for her hand. It was the first time he'd touched her all evening, for nearly two weeks in actual fact and Lindsay felt the shock of the physical contact like a lightning bolt piercing her skin.

"No!" she exclaimed more vehemently than she intended, roughly pulling her hand out of his grasp. "No," she repeated, quieter this time. "Don't say anything, not here, not now."

Gathering up her remaining courage, she lifted her tear-filled gaze to look him directly in the eye. "You think about it, Danny. You think about it properly and you decide what it is you want and then maybe we can talk. Whether it's good news or bad, you make a decision and you honour it."

He looked away, refusing to meet her gaze and she resisted the urge to throw up her hands in defeat. "I'm not asking you to marry me, give me babies, or anything like that," she said. "I'm just asking you to love me in the best way you know how, to fully commit to making this relationship work. If it fails then it fails, but at least we'll know we gave it our best shot. If it's not something that you want then I'll have to learn to accept that, but I need you to be honest with me. As a friend, as a colleague, you owe me that."

She felt the last of her remaining strength circle the drain and vanish then. "I have to go," she said, biting on her bottom lip to hold back the tears. "Tell Jess, Flack, I'm sorry… Tell them… Just tell them… I have to go."

She turned away, her stride quickening, her need to run overwhelming…

Danny reluctantly let her leave. He was shocked, stunned, but he knew she'd only turn him away if he followed her. Letting her go was the only thing he could do right now. As for what happened next? Well, he guessed only time would tell on that. It seemed he had a decision to make, although how he was supposed to do that when his life was in such turmoil, he had no earthly idea…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **I know Danny behaves rather badly in this but it's meant to be a mirror of the blasé attitude he had towards Lindsay during the scene about him forgetting her birthday and throughout most of 'Right Next Door'. When she finally gives him a piece of her mind and drops her 'I've fallen in love with you' bomb-shell, I think that was Danny's light-bulb moment on the show and is the main inspiration for the 'What if' element of this story. _

_What if Lindsay had told him she loved him before he'd slept with Rikki for example? What would have happened then? Tune in next week to find out!_

_CharmedBec x_


	3. Introspection

**SOMETHING WORTH FIGHTING FOR**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: '**_Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?' Some choice words from a family member spur Lindsay Monroe into action over her increasingly shaky relationship with a certain Danny Messer._

**Notes: **Okay viewers so this week's episode belongs to Danny – time to get inside his head for a little while…

**OOOOOO**

**Episode 3: Introspection**

_**The next day…**_

When Danny's cell phone sounded for perhaps the fourth time that morning, he purposely ignored it - as he had done the other three times it had rung since he'd woken up a few hours earlier. Still dressed in his pyjama bottoms, he lay prone on his bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling with his heart and mind in emotional overload. He was struggling to focus his brain enough for coherent thought, but he knew he had to pull himself together soon or his whole life was going to implode on him like a tower block undergoing demolition.

He'd called in sick an hour or so ago, and it had been clear from the tone of Mac's voice that he hadn't believed a word of his rather half-hearted claims of flu. He'd let him get away with it however - something that only made Danny feel worse in the end. He'd much rather his boss had given him short shrift over his lack of work ethics instead of showing the compassion that he had. Now, not only was he dodging the bullet with his car-crash of a love life, he was doing the same with his career also. As if his life wasn't complicated enough.

His bubble of denial had well and truly popped that was for sure. The tears he'd witnessed on Lindsay's cheeks last night, the pain he'd seen in her eyes as well as the emotional agony he'd heard in her voice - he couldn't brush it aside, he couldn't pretend it hadn't happened. She'd made something of a joke out of him forgetting her birthday, but she wasn't pulling any punches this time around. She'd opened her heart to him with breath-taking clarity and what she'd revealed had knocked him right on his proverbial ass.

He'd been dealt a timely punch in the gut when she'd asked him if he'd been unfaithful to her. He'd not broken her trust in that way, but had she been right? Would he have done so if things between him and Rikki had taken a turn in that direction? Would he have betrayed the woman who'd been the sole object of his desire for well over a year now? Taking a good, hard look in the mirror, he was disgusted to find that he probably would. Not consciously or deliberately, but in his desperate need to fulfil his obligation to his bereaved neighbour, he could have over-stepped the mark and done the unthinkable to his steadfastly loyal girlfriend.

It was a sobering thought, realising how low he might have stooped in his campaign to make amends for his fatal mistake. He was not a cheater by nature, never had been – a serial monogamist with an occasionally indecent amount of time between one woman and the next in his youth, yes, but a cheater? No, definitely not. He'd always ended one relationship before moving onto the next one, ever since he'd first begun to notice the appeal of the opposite sex in actual fact.

So now he found himself with a tough decision to make – to hold on or to let go, to move on or to stay put? Rikki's continued wellbeing was his duty-bound responsibility, but he didn't want to lose Lindsay, he really didn't. She was the light in his day whereas Rikki was his atonement for the dark. They each exerted their own separate pull on him, but which one would eventually win the emotional tug of war? The answer would leave one of them out in the cold and that was what Danny couldn't reconcile himself with. How could he be with one but stand by and watch the other flounder? It was unthinkable to him, and because of that he remained locked in a perpetual cycle of indecision, a man with no idea of which way to turn.

An over-zealous knocking on the door jerked him sharply out of his reverie then. Rolling out of bed, he went to answer it and discovered a determined-looking Flack standing out in the corridor. Dressed casually in jeans, a monogrammed t-shirt and a worn leather jacket, it was apparent that the dark-haired detective was not on shift for the second time in as many days.

"Two days off in a row, Donnie boy – isn't that career suicide?" Danny quipped as his friend shouldered him aside and stepped over the threshold without waiting to be invited in.

"It was either use 'em or lose 'em," Flack said as he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed the garment over the back of the nearest armchair.

"Mac told me you were sick," he went on as Danny closed the door behind him.

"He sent you over here to check up on me, didn't he?"

"He suggested that I drop by, yeah," Don confirmed with a nod. "Apparently a certain Detective Monroe is not her usual spritely self this morning either – although she at least showed up for work, which is more than can be said for her lazy-ass colleague."

"Mmm," Danny said noncommittally, and then shuffled bare-foot towards the kitchen. "Coffee?" he offered over his shoulder.

"Don't mind if I do," Flack said in reply. "I brought donuts," he added, holding up the striped box in his right hand as evidence.

"Cops and donuts - that's so cliché," Danny remarked as he filled the coffee-machine with water.

"Ahh, but some clichés are good to conform to," Flack said with a grin. "This one in particular," he added as he deposited the box on the counter-top, selected a sugary ring and proceeded to take an appreciative bite.

His expression turned serious then. "So, I take it the fact that you and Linds left me an' Jess high and dry with the bill last night was not the good sign that we hoped it was then?" he enquired.

Danny rubbed at the back of his neck. "Lindsay said to tell you both sorry about skipping out on you like that, but I…" He stopped and sighed. "I guess I forgot," he finished lamely.

Truth was his mind had been anywhere but on his financial obligations. After Lindsay had taken off, he'd headed home without sparing a moment's thought for his waiting dinner companions. There'd been more important things for him to consider.

"Lindsay barely ate anything anyway, but you owe me fifteen bucks," Flack told him bluntly. "But we can settle up later. First, you're going to tell me what's going on with you and everybody's favourite country girl from Montana – she finally ripped you a new one, huh?"

"Don't sound so pleased about it," Danny said with a note of complaint in his voice.

"Well, you did have it coming," Flack said. "You've not exactly been the model boyfriend these past couple of months, have you? Spending all your time with another woman is very bad form, Messer… It's not cool, man, not cool at all," he finished disapprovingly.

"To be fair there _are_ extenuating circumstances," Danny defended weakly.

"Which of course makes it all perfectly okay," Flack returned sarcastically, and then shook his head. "Whatever else is going on in your life, Danny, Lindsay doesn't deserve to be messed around like this. Don't you know how worried about you she's been, huh? Or are you as blind to that as you are to her pain?"

Danny leant his elbows against the kitchen counter and dropped his face into his hands. "No, no," he said, "I just…" He lifted his head to shoot an enquiring look at his friend. "You think I'm sleeping with Rikki too, don't you?"

Flack shrugged. "After seeing the way you were with her in that alleyway a couple of weeks ago, and then again when you brought her down to the precinct later…" He paused to let the implications of his observations register before continuing. "Well, truth is – when Lindsay asked me about it, I couldn't categorically say you weren't - which should tell you just how far off the reservation you are right now. I mean when one of your closest friends doesn't trust you to be doing the right thing then there's gotta be something wrong, hasn't there?"

Danny sighed. "I don't want to hurt Lindsay, I swear I don't, but Rikki – she… she needs me…"

"Rikki needs someone," Flack corrected, "Whether that someone is you is debatable."

"I haven't slept with her, I swear…"

"But that's not to say you wouldn't have done I take it?" Flack deduced, quickly picking up on the hidden inference in those rather too insistent words of denial.

Danny's silence was his reply and he shook his head in exasperation. "Jesus Messer! Can't you see how messed up that is? I mean, how long has Rikki lived in this apartment block, huh? Three years? Four even? If you're so damn attracted to her, why haven't you made a move before now? I mean she'd be an easier prospect than Lindsay any day, wouldn't she? There's nothing more complicated than getting involved with someone you work with and yet Lindsay was the woman you chose to pursue. You've barely even given Rikki a second glance up until now."

"So I wanted Lindsay, is that a crime?" Danny demanded irritably.

"No, but it's something you need to consider. Ruben died and suddenly that flipped a switch inside of you? Come on, Dan – you and Lindsay were practically joined at the hip until a couple of months ago. What you're feeling for Rikki is obligation, pure and simple. It isn't real. It's a projection of the guilt you feel about that little boy. Please tell me you're not going to throw away the real deal for a pale, twisted imitation of it."

"Maybe that's what I deserve for not keeping a better eye on Ruben…"

"You mean it's up to you to take care of his mother now that he's gone whether you want to or not?" Flack said as he poured himself a steaming cup of hot coffee.

Danny nodded in reply, his face a mask of agonising guilt.

Flack sighed. "You can't keep blaming yourself, you know. At some point you've got to accept that the whole thing was just a tragic accident, a horrible twist of fate that you had no conscious control over. But that's beside the point anyway - maybe you feel it's what you deserve, but what about Lindsay, huh? Think about the hurt you're causing her. Does she deserve that? You've been cutting her out of the equation, focusing all your attention on Rikki and how she feels. But Lindsay… well, she deserves better from you than that, you know she does. It's incredibly unfair of you to make this only about you and Rikki."

This was pretty much what Lindsay had said to him the previous night and it hit home just as hard. "You make it all sound so simple!" Danny burst out, pushing away from the kitchen counter and moving to pace agitatedly up and down the apartment's living room. "Why can't anybody see how complicated this is?"

"Except it's not, is it?" Flack said, taking a contemplative sip of his drink as the light finally dawned, "You know what I think? I think you already know what the answer is - you're just struggling with the consequences of what that means for yourself as well as for Rikki."

"She said she'd fallen in love with me," Danny said dully as if he still couldn't quite believe that Lindsay had admitted to that.

Flack rolled his eyes. "Well 'doh!' to quote a certain cartoon character. What planet have you been living on if you don't already know that? You don't risk your career for a bit of fun, do you? The two of you were sensible not to rush into anything too serious, too soon, but you've been together for months now. How else were you expecting things to develop, huh?"

Danny studied his feet. "I guess I'd not really thought about it."

Flack scoffed. "Sure you had – you've just let Ruben's death get in the way of where the two of you were headed. You've been sublimating your feelings for Lindsay because it's taking all of your energy to keep yourself together for Rikki. You wanna fall apart, but you can't because you have to be strong for her. Lindsay offered to share the load, but you pushed her away, and now you're stuck between a rock and a hard place with nowhere left to turn."

"Yeah and don't I know it," Danny lamented darkly.

"Well, face it buddy, you've only got yourself to blame for that," Flack said with a distinct lack of sympathy for his friend's self-induced predicament. "And you know what else? It could have been so different, but now you're going to have to make a choice, because I seriously doubt that Lindsay's gonna accept Rikki as part of your lives for much longer. And you can hardly blame her for that, can you? Not after what you've just told me anyway. She isn't stupid, you know. She's gotta know how close to crossing the line you've gotten."

"So what do you suggest I do then?" Danny asked.

Flack shrugged. "I can't tell you that. It's your choice to make. All I will say is that I've never seen a woman make you as happy as being with Lindsay does. Maybe you should think about why that is, huh? Maybe you should think about exactly how much you're prepared to lose too, because if you turn her away now, it's gonna be one hell of an uphill struggle to win her back if you change your mind later."

There was silence, but Flack could see that the message was finally starting to sink in. He'd said his piece, now it was up to Danny to put the shattered jigsaw puzzle of his life back together again. Draining the last dregs of his coffee, he helped himself to a second donut before going over to retrieve his leather jacket from the back of the armchair. Before he left however, he threw one more parting shot over his shoulder for good measure.

"I'd also think about how you'd feel about seeing her with someone else if I were you," he said as he moved towards the door, "Because a woman as great as Lindsay is not going to remain single forever, however much she might have once loved another."

After Flack had left, Danny went through into the bathroom to take a shower in an attempt to clear the fuzz from his brain. It didn't do much good though; he was just as confused when he emerged from the spray as he was when he'd stepped under it. The only benefit was that he was more alert and therefore able to think things through a bit more rationally.

Don's visit had helped, but he was struggling to feel grateful for that right now. His friend had been like a persistent woodpecker, tap, tap, tapping at his emotional defences until they lay in shards at his feet. He'd certainly provided food for thought and had cleverly saved the best for last – Danny _hated_ the idea of Lindsay with anyone else. He'd been sucker-punched good and proper with that particular pronouncement. She was his, nobody else's, which meant he had to pull his head out of his ass and do something about it before it was too late.

But what was he supposed to do about Rikki? He couldn't abandon her, he couldn't. She was relying on him to get her through this. Who would be there for her if he wasn't? All of her family lived out of state. She'd moved here to get away from her ex, whose drink and drug problem she'd no longer been able tolerate especially after it had begun to adversely affect their son. She'd wanted Ruben to have a better life, free from that kind of negativity, so she'd bravely left behind her previous existence and moved to New York to begin anew. She'd wanted a more positive male role model for her boy too - something she thought she'd found in the man who lived across the hall - the man who, ironically, had ultimately cost her beloved son his precious young life.

Danny knew that Flack was right however – his confused feelings for Rikki didn't come from a place of genuine attraction, they weren't real in that respect. He'd always considered her to be a beautiful woman, but he'd never seriously entertained any thoughts of a relationship with her. What he was feeling for her now was all down to his overwhelming guilt at having failed to prevent Ruben's tragic death. In his heart of hearts, he did know that.

As for Lindsay… well, she'd captured his attention from the very first moment he'd clapped eyes on her. It hadn't been her looks so much - although that pretty face and sexy little body of hers had definitely been worth a second glance - it had been more about the way she'd responded to his new girl hazing. She'd bantered back at him with an easy confidence that had belied her otherwise shy demeanour and he'd been intrigued by the dichotomy in that.

He'd watched her flutter anxiously around Mac like a nervous butterfly that first morning at the Zoo, and yet she'd asked him whether he'd ever seen what a black bear could do to a person without even blinking. He'd pissed her off when he'd manipulated her into calling Mac 'Sir' too, and those cute little feline claws had come out in retaliation. Never one to turn down a challenge, he hadn't been able to resist finding out just how deep they might scratch.

Of course he'd set himself up for a fall with that one, had let her get completely under his skin in the process. She brought out his protective side too – as the Holly's case had so aptly proved. He supposed that's why he'd almost instinctively drawn away from her when Ruben's death had led to a sudden closing of the emotional gap between them. If he'd let her be there for him like she'd wanted to be, it would be like admitting that he needed her in a way that he hadn't been ready to accept.

The last thing he'd wanted to do was hurt her though, but that's what he'd unthinkingly gone and done. He'd made her cry and she was tough little cookie, his Montana. She'd had to be with the life she'd had and yet he'd sliced through her defences and reduced her to tears with his casual indifference towards her. He was heartily ashamed of himself for that, but he was unsure of how to make things right. He could cut off all contact with Rikki, focus all his attention back on the main woman in his life, but would he be able to live with himself if he deserted his neighbour in that way? Wanting the love that Lindsay was offering him was selfish, but putting Rikki's needs above his girlfriend's wasn't right either. She hadn't done anything to deserve that. The sins were his to atone for - Lindsay was an innocent bystander and it was wrong to punish her for his mistake.

And what about her claim that she understood what he was going through more than anyone else, more than Rikki even? He couldn't deny the truth in that assertion now that it had been laid out so eloquently before him. Here was the perfect shoulder for him to lean on therefore – a shoulder that he'd rejected out of what? Fear? Guilt? He no longer knew exactly why to be perfectly honest. All he knew was that now that he'd finally hit rock bottom, that hand that he'd initially brushed aside? Well, he wanted to grab hold of it tightly and never let go of it ever again.

Lindsay was his heart's choice; there was no doubt in his mind about that. What was making him hesitate was whether he could live with the consequences of that choice. Would he resent her for making him put her first in spite of how justified her demands might be? Would his conscience be able to handle not being so beholden to Rikki's needs because of that? He didn't know and that was where his dilemma lay. Flack was right, he only had himself to blame. If he'd handled the situation differently from the start, he wouldn't be where he was today. He was trapped in a cage of his own making, and now he had to figure out the best way out of it for all concerned.

He needed to get out of here, he decided. He needed to clear the cobwebs from his brain so that he could think straight instead of going round and round in endless circles. His mind conjured up an image his Harley and he felt the chains around his heart loosen a little. Whenever he'd had a big decision to make in the past, being out on the open road had always helped. It was still relatively early in the day – he could get out of the city for a while and make it back not too long after nightfall. Maybe with the freedom of the ride, everything would become clearer to him. It was worth a try at least. It wasn't as if he was making much progress procrastinating over things here. His mind made up, he collected his keys, phone, jacket and helmet and headed determinedly out the door.

About forty-five minutes later, he stopped off at a small convenience store on the outskirts of the city to buy some provisions, and it was there that he was struck with another lightning bolt of clarity. As he aimlessly wandered the aisles tossing various items into his basket, he heard male and female laughter coming from somewhere up near the front of the store. The sound was so full of carefree exhilaration that it drew his attention almost immediately.

As he rounded the corner of the last aisle, he spotted the young couple up ahead. They were standing close together by the rack of candy bars near the till. The girl had her arms wrapped around her boyfriend's neck while his arms were looped loosely around her waist, his fingertips cheekily grazing the pert curve of her jean-clad bottom. As Danny watched, the man bent closer to whisper something in her ear and then instinctively drew back to watch for her reaction. Whatever he'd said made her throw back her head and laugh delightedly, and the smile on the guy's face widened into a broad grin as a result.

Danny felt the breath leave his lungs with a whoosh. The couple seemed so happy and relaxed in each other's company that it was as if nothing could divide them. He and Lindsay used to be like that, he realised – he remembered the two of them acting very similar only three and a half months before in actual fact.

It had been during their one-and-only weekend away together, and they'd headed up-state for the duration, stopping off at a store very like this one on the way. Freed from the restraints of their working lives, they'd both been in high spirits, laughing and joking as they wandered the aisles together. He'd done something very similar to this guy he remembered, had leaned in close and whispered something outlandish in her ear with the express purpose of making her laugh. Lindsay had reacted exactly like this girl and he remembered feeling ridiculously pleased with himself at having drawn such a vibrant response from her.

He'd not termed it love at the time, but he understood now that that's what it was. It had been his very first thought as he looked at this couple, and anybody observing him and Lindsay that day would have thought exactly the same thing. Flack's words from earlier sounded in his head as if to emphasise this undeniable fact.

'_You don't risk your career for a bit of fun, do you? How else were you expecting things to develop, huh?'_

Why had he chosen to pursue a relationship with Lindsay when common sense should have told him to leave it alone? It was because he couldn't get her out of his head, that's why. He'd made a valiant attempt to keep things on a strictly platonic level between them, but it hadn't worked. After a year of wanting and wondering he'd finally taken fate into his own hands and asked her out on a date. It had taken them another seven months or so to get their fledgling relationship off the ground of course, but ever since then they'd never looked back.

'_I've never seen a woman make you as happy as being with Lindsay does. Maybe you should think about why that is, huh?'_

That was the billion dollar question wasn't it? Why was it so different with Lindsay? Why hadn't his interest waned when in most of his previous relationships he'd gotten bored after just a few months? Another flashback provided him with the likely answer.

'_I lost my best friend and my lover with no warning whatsoever.'_

That's what Lindsay had said to him last night and it was telling that she'd termed him her best friend first and her lover second. He supposed that was it - he'd never really been friends with any woman he'd been involved with before. Was that what set this relationship apart from all the rest? It was something to think about at any rate.

After paying for his items, he left the store and headed across the parking lot towards his waiting bike. His cell phone rang just as he was stashing his lunch into the pannier on the back, and this time he chose to look at it. His stomach dropped when he saw the name on the display – Rikki – had she been calling him all morning? His thumb hovered in mid-air, his heart and mind locked in an internal struggle over which button to press. In the end he pressed neither and instead waited until she finally gave up and ended the call herself. Checking the phone's log, he noticed that all but one of his missed calls had been from her.

The all too familiar guilt clutched painfully at his stomach. He couldn't bring himself to completely ignore her, but he didn't want to talk to her all the same. Not now, not when he had so much else on his mind. He owed Lindsay a fair hearing. She'd asked him to think seriously about what he wanted from their relationship and he wasn't going to let her down in that respect. His priorities had subtly shifted overnight – today belonged to his girlfriend and the choice that she'd requested him to make. He couldn't allow Rikki to distract him from that goal. His resolve strengthened, he composed a brief text and sent it before he could change his mind.

'_Sorry – caught up at work. Can't talk right now.'_

Not waiting for a reply, he switched his cell to silent, and then climbed astride his bike. After fastening his helmet securely under his chin, he gunned the engine, kicked off from the ground and manoeuvred the bike out of the parking lot and onto the open road.

Accelerating down the highway, his thoughts returned to Lindsay and her ultimatum. He'd debated things long enough, he decided. The time had finally arrived for him to make a conscious choice about the way ahead…

_**To be continued…**_


	4. Reconnection

**SOMETHING WORTH FIGHTING FOR**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: '**_Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?' Some choice words from a family member spur Lindsay Monroe into action over her increasingly shaky relationship with a certain Danny Messer._

**Notes: **Hi! Me again. Okay so it's finally time to discover the results of Danny's introspection from last week. Read on for Episode 4...

**OOOOOO**

**Episode 4: Reconnection**

Much later that evening, there was a soft knock on the door which Danny almost didn't hear above the blare of the TV.

Getting up from where he was slumped on the sofa watching a late night ball-game, he went to answer it and was surprised to discover Lindsay standing out in the hallway. After a long, hard day of intense contemplation, he had intended to go and see her first thing in the morning and so wasn't prepared for her to come to him, not after everything that had happened between them the previous night anyway.

"Hi!" she said a little warily, and then huffed out a small, exasperated breath. "I said I wouldn't do this," she lamented, clearly frustrated with herself for having acted against her principles.

"I said I'd wait for you to come to me," she went on. "But I can't think straight, Danny. We _have_ to talk. All this is starting to affect my work – I almost destroyed some trace evidence today. Luckily Adam intervened before I used the wrong solvent, but that's not the point. It shouldn't have happened; I should have been paying attention. I should have…"

She broke off her rambling when Danny timely distracted her by reaching out to lightly touch her face with his fingers. "I'm glad you came," he told her quietly as she gazed up at him with confused eyes. Running his hand down the length of her arm, he gently took her hand in his. "Come in," he urged her.

"Please," he requested plaintively when she resisted against his hold.

Stunned into submission by his abrupt change in demeanour, Lindsay relented and allowed him to lead her inside. The moment she was over the threshold, she pointedly removed her hand from his grasp however. It cut like a knife, but Danny supposed it wasn't anything less than what he deserved. Shutting the door behind her, he cast about for something appropriate to say.

"Umm – did you want a drink or something?" he eventually fumbled.

"No thanks, I'm fine." Lindsay told him brusquely as she unbuttoned her coat and shrugged out of it.

Not knowing what else to do, he silently took the garment from her, hung it up on the coat-stand in the corner, and then moved further into the room to pick up the remote from where it was balanced rather precariously on the arm of the sofa. With a quick click of a button, he shut off the TV and then turned back to face her. There was a beat of loaded silence before they both spoke at once.

"I'm sorry…"

"Did you…?"

Danny sighed and ran an agitated hand through his short spiky hair. "Lindsay look, umm…" He stopped and tried again. "I err…"

Breaking off for a second time, he made a small sound of frustration in the back of his throat at being unable to articulate what he wanted to say. "Maybe you should sit down," he finally suggested.

After a moment of hesitation, Lindsay did eventually do as he asked, but perched gingerly on the edge of the sofa, half ready to flee even so. Somewhat deflated, Danny sat down beside her and reached for her hand, needing some kind of physical connection between them because he didn't know how well he would be able to express himself in words. She flinched at his touch, but didn't immediately pull away, something he felt was a good sign after her earlier rejection.

"I'm sorry," he said, repeating his previous apology. "I've been a real jerk to you lately, haven't I?"

The answering flicker in her eyes said 'Oh, you think?' but she didn't speak the words and instead waited patiently for him to continue. He almost wished she had responded with that pithy comeback though - it would have been a whole lot easier to deal with than the expectant quiet that was for sure.

"It's just that after what happened to Ruben, I felt as if I was being pulled in all directions," he tried to explain, "It all got too much in the end, but that doesn't excuse how I treated you, I know it doesn't. I just…"

He stopped, once again unable to find the right words. Dropping his gaze to the floor, he studied the carpet with the kind of intense scrutiny that he usually reserved for a crime scene. After a long beat of silence, he drew in an audible breath and determinedly lifted his gaze back to hers. "I never meant to hurt you, you know," he told her with genuine sincerity.

"But you're in love with her," she finished for him matter-of-factly, even though her heart was breaking in two inside of her chest.

"No!" He shook his head adamantly. "No, I… Things were confused there for a while, I'll admit, but she isn't what I want. I thought that spending time with her would make me feel better, but it doesn't – it just makes it worse."

"And what about me, Danny?" Lindsay burst out emotionally. "Do you want to be with me or am I just some sort of a passing phase to you?"

"No, no, you… You're…" He swallowed the lump in his throat and forced himself to continue. "I don't know how to put it into words, but I miss you, Linds, more than you could possibly know."

"Well, you've got a damn funny way of showing it," Lindsay responded bitterly. "Half the time it's as if you can't bear to be in the same room as me."

"I know," he acknowledged. "It's just that I felt under so much pressure to be a certain way around you."

That stung. She thought she'd been more than understanding. "Under pressure to be what way?" she demanded.

He sighed. "I don't know. It's hard to explain. I didn't want to need you, I guess, and so it was easier to push you away than deal with what that meant."

"But why was needing me such a bad thing?" Lindsay asked him, "What did I do that made you feel as if you couldn't count on me?"

"Nothing!" he rushed to reassure her. "It wasn't about that. It was me, _I _couldn't handle it. Needing you - it's err… not a bad thing, it's a scary thing. I've never been with anyone that makes me feel the way that you do, and it was a lot to take in on top of everything else."

He reached out to take her other hand in his. "I know I messed up, babe," he assured her earnestly, "And I'm sorry, I swear I am." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "I don't know what else to say."

"Well, I suppose the real question is - do you want to make it right or would you rather just call it quits?" Lindsay asked him.

It took a lot for her to lay it on the line like that, but she had to know. She couldn't continue the way that they were. Not knowing where they stood was tearing her apart inside. "We have to end things between us if you're not prepared to fully commit to it," she went on, wanting to make her feelings on the matter crystal clear. "Casual is not an option for us anymore. It's time for you to step up and be the man that I need you to be - the man that I know that you can be if you just put a little bit of effort into it."

"Usually when a woman asks for commitment, I'd run a mile in the opposite direction," Danny told her wryly. "But with you, it's different. I don't want to walk away. I want this." He squeezed her hands to underscore his point. "I want you. I just don't know how good I'm going to be at it."

Lindsay reached out to cup his grizzled cheek in her hand, her previously brittle attitude towards him softening slightly. "I want to love _you_, Danny." she responded quietly. "And that means accepting you for who you are. But it also means that you have to give something back too. I'm not asking you to be perfect; I'm just asking you to let me be there for you - and for you to be there for me in return."

He shot her a small, self-deprecating smile. "So no pressure then, huh?"

She returned his smile with one of her own and then instinctively shifted closer, lifting her arms to him in silent invitation. Danny willingly accepted the offered gesture, hugging her close and burying his face in her hair. It felt good to have her small, soft body fitted so snugly against his. Her breath was warm and sweet on his neck, while her freshly-washed hair smelled like a garden in the first bloom of spring. He unconsciously tightened his arms around her, not wanting to let go.

Lindsay felt his emotional surrender and experienced a surge of renewed hope in response. How many times had she wanted to do this? How many times had she looked upon his tortured face and wanted to soothe his troubles away with the simple virtue of a heartfelt hug. But he hadn't let her, she remembered darkly. He'd rejected all such offers of comfort, pushing her away with little regard for her feelings. This was the first time in months that he'd let his guard down around her. It was definite progress, but she still needed more from him.

Lightly kissing his cheek, she gently untangled herself from his embrace and pulled back to look deep into his eyes - eyes that were thankfully no longer veiled with a ten-foot high 'No Trespass' sign. "Talk to me," she urged.

"I don't know how," he told her honestly, his voice cracking over the words.

"There's no right way, just start at the beginning," she suggested quietly.

Figuring he had nothing left to lose and everything to gain, Danny sucked in a deep breath and proceeded to do exactly that…

**OOOOOO**

_**Somewhere near Portland, Maine…**_

"But you've only been here three days," Myra Sandoval said as she watched her daughter whirl like a dervish around the room, gathering up her things and stuffing them untidily into the open suitcase on the bed.

"I know," Rikki said irritably. "But if I drive to the airport now, I can probably get on an early flight to New York in the morning."

"I don't understand why it's so important for you to get back," her mother protested. "Stay with your brother for a little while longer, please. I don't like the thought of you going through all this alone."

"I need to get on with my life, Mom," Rikki explained. "I belong in New York now – with or without Ruben. And I won't be alone - I have friends, good friends, plus a job I love too."

"And this Danny guy? How much of your hurry to get back is about him?" her mother asked.

Rikki sighed. "He's been great, a real rock for me since Ruben died, but we're just friends, Mom."

Myra wasn't entirely convinced about that, but she reluctantly let the subject drop. She would continue to worry about it in private however. I mean how stable could a relationship born out of intense grief really be? While she remembered her grandson mentioning their neighbour Danny in the past – apparently he was a cop and had been teaching Ruben how to shoot hoops and pitch a ball in his spare time - the name hadn't ever crossed Rikki's lips before now.

She'd met him for the first time at her grandson's memorial service a month ago and could understand why her daughter was so drawn to him. An officer with the NYPD, he was a solid citizen by all accounts, unlike Ruben's good-for-nothing father. He obviously held down a responsible job and had seemed nice enough on first impressions. Except he hadn't come to the service alone - two others had attended with him - a handsome, dark-haired young man, and, more significantly, a small, pretty brunette.

The young woman had hovered in the background for the most part, but her connection to the man that had suddenly become the centre of her daughter's life wasn't hard to spot. Myra was pretty sure that Rikki was aware of the relationship between the two, but was choosing to ignore it because it was easier that way. It was all going to end in tears, Myra was certain of it, but it appeared there was nothing she could do to persuade her daughter that she was pursuing an impossible dream. Rikki had always been stubborn, ever since she was a little girl. Once she'd set her mind to something, she wasn't going to change it, no matter what anyone said.

Myra sighed. However much she might want to intervene, her daughter was a grown woman capable of making her own decisions and living with the consequences of them. All she could really do was wait for the inevitable fall-out and be there to pick up the pieces when it was all over.

**OOOOOO**

_**New York City…**_

He'd asked her to stay as midnight approached and when she'd hesitated had moved quickly to clarify his request. "Just to sleep, we don't have to… you know. I need… no, I want you beside me, Lindsay."

So she'd consented to stay and had fallen asleep with her head nestled into the crook of his collarbone and the flat of her palm resting evocatively over his heart. He'd held her tightly against his side, his hand curled possessively around her hip and his cheek resting lightly against her hair.

And so she'd been there when he'd woken at 3 AM, breathing heavily from a nightmare about Ruben cycling off around the corner with his yellow t-shirt stained red with blood while everyone around, including himself, remained oblivious to the young boy's tragic fate.

"Ssh, it's okay," she whispered as she kissed away the involuntary tears on his cheeks, "I'm here, I'm here."

"Lindsay…"

His lips found hers in a kiss that expressed everything he couldn't say in words. He'd sworn that he'd respect her need to hold back for a while, but now that she was here in his arms, he couldn't suppress the desire to be at one with her. This was the emotional connection that he'd denied himself for so long and he needed it - desperately.

"Please," he murmured urgently against her lips.

Thankfully it appeared that she was almost as frantic to reconnect as he, for she didn't resist when he reached down to remove the t-shirt that he'd lent her to sleep in. Instead she responded with equal fervour, tugging at his clothing until they were finally – blessedly - skin-to-skin. They made love by the filtered light from the street-lamps outside and for Danny it was like coming home after a long, difficult journey.

"I love you," he whispered quietly into her hair some time later, as their bodies cooled in the languorous aftermath of passion.

Lindsay felt everything inside her relax at those words. She knew he wouldn't have said them if he didn't mean them, he wasn't that kind of guy. Against all the odds, the man that she loved had come back to her. She wasn't naïve enough to think that their problems were over, but she knew that they'd face them together from now on. He'd hurt her and he had some making up to do for that, plus there was still the spectre of Rikki Sandoval hanging over their heads. Other than to establish his fidelity, the extent of Danny's relationship with his neighbour was the one thing that they hadn't discussed in any great detail earlier. They were both too emotionally raw for that and so had chosen to set the thorny subject aside for another day.

That day would have to be sometime soon however, because while Lindsay could have accepted the presence of Rikki in their lives before, after the events of the last few weeks it was no longer possible for her to do so. Danny may not have crossed the line, but he'd skated pretty damn close to it even so.

Lindsay understood that his behaviour was more a symptom of his out-of-proportion sense of responsibility towards the woman whose life he felt he'd destroyed - rather than a reflection on her or the way that he felt about her - but that didn't make it any easier to accept. Some stringent ground-rules would have to be put in place if she was to feel secure in their relationship and trust in his continued constancy from now on. Danny wasn't stupid, he had to know that. He had to…

Shifting position, she looked up into his face, noting in passing that the lines of strain on his brow seemed to have faded a little since he'd opened the door to her several hours earlier. His eyes were closed, but the rhythm of his breathing indicated that he was still awake. Eventually feeling the weight of her scrutiny, he opened his eyes a fraction. "What?" he said, his voice gruff and drowsy.

She reached up to trace the outline of his lips, a gesture he responded to by lightly kissing the pads of her fingers. "I love you too," she told him softly.

He cocked his eyebrow at her. "I sense there's a 'but' in there somewhere…"

"A little one," she acknowledged with an incline of her head. "We can't go on the way we have been, you know."

He nodded solemnly. "I know."

"Do you?" she asked, her tone decidedly sceptical.

In response, he pulled her up the length of his body so that they were face-to-face. "Lindsay, I know," he insisted, stroking his thumb soothingly over the swell of her cheek. "I know how badly I messed up, and I know that I now have to prove myself worthy of your trust because of that."

"And are you prepared for what that means?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "Maybe not," he admitted candidly, "But you are what I want, I am sure of that. Being without you these last few months has been hell. I know I acted as if I didn't care, but that's just because I'm an emotionally stunted dumbass."

She smiled at his sarcastic self-flagellation and he shot a wry smile at her in return before his expression turned serious once again. "The prospect of losing you was enough of a wake-up call though, believe me," he assured her. "I won't make the same mistake twice, I promise you that."

Amazingly she believed him, even if her faith in him was still a little shaky at present. Despite the risk to her bruised heart, she had to be strong and afford him the benefit of the doubt. If she built up too many defensive walls around him, then they'd never be able to put this behind them and move on. She had to be brave. She had to gather up her remaining courage and take a chance on the long-shot if she was going to reap the potential rewards on offer.

Dipping her head, she kissed him, slowly and sweetly. "We've still got some talking to do," she warned him when she drew back.

He nodded. "I know, but tomorrow okay, huh?"

Resting her cheek against his chest, she lay down her head and wearily closed her eyes. "Okay tomorrow it is," she agreed, her voice thick with approaching sleep.

Within minutes, the sandman had captured her, but Danny lay awake for a little while longer, his mind still whirring with the rollercoaster ride of emotions that he'd experienced over the past twenty-four hours. He'd made his decision and was prepared to stand by it, but that didn't mean it was going to be easy to follow through.

Like it or not, he had to distance himself from Rikki and her problems. Now that he'd faced up to things with Lindsay, he didn't actually believe he would ever cheat on her. It had been side-lining her emotionally that had made him so vulnerable to such illicit temptation. Now that she was back, front and centre in his life where she belonged, he was confident he would stay true.

The woman in his arms was his future and he didn't want to let that potential slip through his grasp. Even so, she felt like a reward that he didn't deserve, and yet she loved him in spite of all the mistakes that he'd made. That was the crux of the matter in the end. By denying himself her love, he was breaking her heart and that was something he couldn't do.

Love, once properly acknowledged, had the power to defeat guilt every time, he discovered. One was a healthy expression of human emotion; the other an encroaching disease that could systematically destroy everything in its path. He wasn't helping Rikki by making himself so beholden to her, he understood that now. Instead he was dragging them both deeper into the mire and that was something that had to stop for both their sakes.

However hard it might be, he had to be strong and sever that unhealthy bond. It wouldn't be easy, but in the end it would lead them both to a better place. It was a cliché, he knew, but sometimes you really did have to be cruel to be kind. When his resolve wavered as it inevitably would, he would do well to remind himself of that.

With his chaotic thoughts finally assembled into some sort of order, he felt the tide of weariness break free from its confines and sweep over him like a comforting blanket. Gathering the slumbering Lindsay closer in his arms, he pressed his lips to her hair and at long last gave into his body's overpowering need to sleep.

**OOOOOO**

_**Portland International Jetport, several hours earlier…**_

"I need a one-way ticket on the next flight to JFK," Rikki Sandoval told the brightly dressed young woman behind the desk.

"That won't be until tomorrow morning," the sales clerk warned her.

"I know that," she replied curtly. "I'll wait. I just need to be on that flight, okay?"

Figuring if the woman wanted to spend the entire night at the airport that was her prerogative, the clerk tapped the details into her computer. "That will be one hundred and seventy dollars please," she announced in a sing-song tone.

Rikki handed over her credit card and ten minutes later left the desk and went in search of somewhere to wait out the hours until her 08.45 flight was called. Once she was settled with a Mocha Latte and a grilled chicken sandwich, she took out her phone from her purse.

No missed calls – she'd been sure Danny would call her when he had the chance. She'd rung him five times that day and the only response she'd received was that short to the point text around 11 AM: _'Sorry – caught up at work. Can't talk right now.' _She glanced at her watch – it was about ten minutes after midnight now. It had been over twelve hours since then, twenty-four since she'd last spoken to him – how long could his shift feasibly last? Surely he was home by now?

She pressed the call button, but once again his cell clicked to answer-phone after only a few rings. "Danny – Rikki again," she said into the receiver, "I hope you're okay. I haven't heard from you in over twenty-four hours now. Call me when you get this message please. I need to talk to you."

She didn't tell him that she was on her way home and she wasn't exactly sure why she'd failed to mention it. In the back of her mind, there was a sense of foreboding building – it was almost as if he was deliberately avoiding her, but that couldn't be right, could it?

Shaking her head, she ruthlessly quashed such untenable thoughts. Danny was her strength right now and he knew it. He wouldn't let her down. He wasn't that kind of guy. He fulfilled his responsibilities to the people he cared about; he didn't shirk them like some other men she knew. She was worrying over nothing, of course she was.

Wasn't she?

_**To be continued…**_

A/N2: _I should probably warn you now – there might not be an episode next week and it'll be on Sunday if there is. I'll try my best, but real life is intervening so we may have to go on a mini-hiatus for a week. _


	5. Boundaries

**SOMETHING WORTH FIGHTING FOR**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: '**_Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?' Some choice words from a family member spur Lindsay Monroe into action over her increasingly shaky relationship with a certain Danny Messer._

**Notes: **Hey! Sorry about the delay. I knew real life was going to interfere but I wasn't expecting it to interfere quite so much. Anyway, I'm back now so read on for Episode 5…

**OOOOOO**

**Episode 5: Boundaries**

Lindsay woke first the next morning. Glancing at the clock on the bedside cabinet, she winced at the late hour – 10 AM. She supposed that's what you got from indulging in a therapeutic round of horizontal gymnastics in the early hours of the morning.

Still, it was worth it, she thought, glancing over at her sleeping bedfellow with a contented smile. After weeks of uncertainty and angst, she was finally waking up on a positive note for once. And it wasn't as if they had to be at work for hours yet anyway– they were both working the 4PM-to-midnight shift tonight.

It was something she'd originally been dreading. The Lab tended to be quieter during the latter half of the so-called 'twilight' shift, meaning that she and Danny would have been forced into each other's company with very little to distract them from their relationship woes. After last night's breakthrough however, that time would now be less of endurance and more of a chance to continue re-establishing their lost bond.

What difference a day made, huh? Yesterday, she was facing life without the man she loved. Today, she was looking forward to a brand new future with him. She wouldn't go as far as to say that this was it, but she knew she would be approaching a significant cross-road in her life sometime soon. She wanted marriage and children when the time – and the partner - was right, and her biological clock was definitely starting to tick. Not very loudly at the moment it had to be said, but she knew it would reach a rapid crescendo over the next few years all the same.

Notwithstanding this painful bump in the road, Danny was her best prospect for that happily-ever-after in over five years now. They were in tune with each other on so many levels and yet were different enough to keep things fresh and interesting too. He was her best friend and that counted for a lot, not to mention the fact that he understood the demands of her job like no-one else could. Yes, they had a few communication issues to resolve, but as long as Danny kept his promise to properly invest in their relationship from now on, she was confident that they could get past them.

Maybe this shake-up was exactly what they needed therefore. They'd been drifting along on a sea of complacency thus far – happy in their connection, but with very little direction or plans for the future in evidence. Now she felt as if they were going somewhere at long last – a whole new world of possibility had opened up in front of them. Of course she wished it had happened in another way, but she was still glad that it had happened if this was the result.

Carefully lifting the heavy muscular arm that was curled possessively around her waist, she soundlessly slid out from under the bed-clothes and shivered as the cooler air of the bedroom hit her bare skin. Bending over to retrieve the t-shirt that Danny had lent her from its discarded position on the floor, she tugged it on over her head as she crossed to the chest of drawers where she kept her emergency overnight provisions. Danny had cleared the middle drawer for her to use a while back, and she didn't think that things had gotten so bad between them that he would have emptied it in the interim.

The drawer creaked a little as she pulled it open and she winced lest her peacefully sleeping boyfriend be disturbed by the noise. Glancing back over her shoulder, she noted with satisfaction that he was still dead to the world, something that she was grateful for after witnessing the nightmare that he'd suffered only a few hours before. Knowing what it had been like for her after her teenage friends had been murdered; she suspected that sleep had become a precious commodity to Danny just lately. It would do him good to sleep in a little therefore.

Grabbing a bra-and-panty set from the drawer, she quietly gathered up her deodorant, face-wash and moisturising cream and went through into the bathroom, where she took a quick, invigorating shower using the fruity shower-gel that Danny kept in his bathroom cabinet for her. Once she was done, she brushed her teeth and moisturised her skin before pulling the over-sized t-shirt back on over her clean underwear. She could have dressed herself in the jeans and sweater that hung in the back of the closet in Danny's room, but for him to wake up and find her making him brunch and wearing his clothes was somehow the epitome of a night spent in love and passion. The t-shirt was freshly laundered, but it still somehow smelled of him and wearing it gave her a warm, glow-y feeling inside that she was loath to let go of after so many nights spent miserable and alone.

Wandering through into the apartment's small kitchenette, she wasn't surprised to find the refrigerator well-stocked with fresh produce. For a guy who lived alone and in New York, her boyfriend did a remarkable amount of his own cooking. She supposed it was something instilled in him by his matriarchal mother, who seemed to have a great deal of influence over the numerous Messer men. The woman had clearly cossetted her sons within an inch of their lives whilst they'd been growing up, but apparently had also taken it upon herself to ensure that they were properly self-sufficient once they'd flown the proverbial nest too.

Lindsay had yet to meet Rosa and Michael Messer - something which had never really bothered her before, but that she now felt needed to be remedied. The prospect of meeting Danny's parents made her understandably nervous, but if he agreed to introduce her to them then it would lift her status from casual girlfriend to a more serious one, and she really needed that distinction from their relationship now.

She smiled inwardly to herself – she was getting positively dictatorial with her list of demands, but she'd learnt a valuable lesson over the past few weeks. Danny may not like being backed into a corner, but he didn't respond all that well to subtle either. If you laid it on the line for him however, he would commit if he felt it was the right thing for him to do. He'd willingly stepped out of his comfort-zone and given her what she'd asked for the previous evening for instance. She knew it had been difficult for him to confide in her like that, but he'd done it and she believed he had ended up feeling a whole lot better for the unburdening too.

Humming quietly to herself, she savoured the revitalising smell of brewing coffee as she chopped mushrooms, peppers and ham to add to the scrambled eggs that she intended to make. She'd already laid the small table nearby with two sets of cutlery, a couple of mismatched plates and a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice in preparation. It all looked very homey and domesticated, but that was the effect she was after. She wanted to be an integral part of Danny's life not just a visitor in it, and that meant treating his place a bit more like her own.

There was a knock on the door as she opened the refrigerator to get some butter for the scrambled eggs and at first she wasn't quite sure what to do. She wasn't exactly dressed for company and Danny was still asleep in the other room. She glanced down at the motif-ed t-shirt she wore – it came to around mid-thigh so wasn't actually indecent, just not necessarily an outfit she'd normally choose to answer the door in. Who would be calling around at this time in the morning though? The mail-man? He'd probably seen a whole lot worse in his time, plus Danny's neighbours had all seen her around often enough to know who she was.

A second knock sounded, louder and more insistent than the first. Scuttling over to the door, she lifted up on her tip-toes and looked through the peep-hole. The sight that greeted her made her blood run cold. Rikki Sandoval – the sting in the tail of her newfound optimism. For a brief instant she debated not opening the door, but then her self-preservation instincts kicked in. Why shouldn't she for god's sake? Danny was her boyfriend. It would do the woman good to see that they were still very much an item despite her interference over the past few weeks. She would remain calm and collected in the face of provocation, she decided. She would _not_ act as if her being here was anything out of the ordinary. She had a perfect right to stay over; she and Danny had been dating for months…

"Oh, it's you!" The look of shocked surprise on Rikki's face was remarkably gratifying, but Lindsay tried not to let her sense of triumph show.

"I was expecting Danny," the other woman blurted in confusion.

'_I bet you were,'_ Lindsay thought darkly. "He's still asleep," she said out loud. "We were up quite late last night. He's been under a lot of strain lately and he's not been sleeping too well because of that, so I decided to let him lie-in for a while."

"I thought you were visiting your family in Maine," she continued when Rikki failed to react to the pointed barb aimed in her direction. Lindsay knew it had been a little mean of her to point out the damaging effect of the situation on the guilt-ridden Danny like that, but she couldn't help it. As much as she sympathised with the woman's loss – and she did honestly feel for her in that respect – the fact remained that Rikki had still almost destroyed what she and Danny had together with her excessive neediness and that was something that could no longer be tolerated.

Looking decidedly flustered, Rikki anxiously combed her fingers through her long, dark hair, obviously unsure of how to respond. "I err… I was, but I decided to come back early. I umm… Danny hasn't been returning my calls and I thought something might have happened to him. I just came round to check that he was okay."

"He's fine," Lindsay assured her, "We've just been a bit busy, that's all."

'_Plus he's finally realised where his priorities lie,'_ she added silently to herself.

"I can go and wake him if you want," she offered magnanimously, her tone artificially bright and cheery.

Rikki immediately began to back away, her eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights. "Oh no, don't worry, I… I'll come back another time," she stuttered.

"No, no, come in," Lindsay said in a steely tone, beckoning the other woman insistently inside.

Maybe it was beneath her to force the issue, but she had to defend what was hers. Danny's relationship with this woman had been a closed book up until now and Lindsay wanted to witness how the two of them interacted for herself. She believed Danny when he said he hadn't been unfaithful to her, but she wasn't naïve enough to think that there'd never been any threat of that.

Given the events of the past few weeks, she fully expected him to be stuttering and awkward about coaxing Rikki to back off a little, but she also knew that if he was truly serious about making things work between them then he wouldn't leave room for any doubt on her part either. It was a test, yes, but a test that was necessary for the successful future of their relationship as far as Lindsay was concerned.

"Help yourself to coffee," she said, gesturing at the pot full of fragrant, dark liquid on the counter. "I'll go and wake Danny."

Not giving Rikki a chance to object, she went through into the bedroom and perched on the edge of the bed to wake up her sleeping boyfriend.

"What-whah?" he mumbled incoherently as he emerged sandy-eyed from slumber. He blinked confusedly a couple of times before his gaze finally settled on her face. The broad smile that bloomed on his lips in response to finding her there was a considerable shot in the arm to Lindsay's bruised self-esteem. "Hey you!" he greeted, his voice smooth and sweet as molasses.

Sitting up, he curled his hand round the back of her head and brought her mouth down to his. Forgetting the gooseberry in the other room, Lindsay allowed herself to sink into the embrace… well, that was until she felt his hand sneak cheekily under her t-shirt with seductive intent anyway. When that happened, she pulled back and gently but firmly pushed him and his wandering hands away.

"You have a visitor," she told him solemnly, her expression communicating the significance of that information.

Danny looked confused for a moment, but soon realised what she meant. "She wasn't supposed to be back until Friday," he said, his cheeks turning a little pale at the prospect of having to deal with Rikki now.

"Apparently she decided to come back early. It seems you haven't been returning her calls."

Lindsay tried to keep her voice nonchalant, but she didn't think she quite managed to disguise the accusatory bite in her tone. She wasn't stupid. It was obvious that Rikki had felt Danny slipping through her grasp and had come back to New York to re-establish her hold on him. The woman might believe her intentions were pure and without malicious intent, but Lindsay knew Rikki was kidding herself on that. She needed Danny to fill the hole left by the loss of her son and seemed - at least in Lindsay's eyes - to be completely oblivious to who she was trampling over to achieve that goal.

"No I…" Danny reached out to tenderly touch her face. "I had a lot to think about, didn't I?"

Lindsay nodded. "Well, you'd better come and tell her that then," she said crisply. "Put some clothes on first though," she instructed, glancing down at his naked torso.

"Lindsay wait…" Danny reached out and caught her arm as she rose to her feet.

Huffing out an exasperated sigh, she looked down into his pleading eyes. "Look, I'm trying my best to be reasonable here, Danny," she told him snappily, "But don't expect me to be a martyr, okay? _You_ were the one who messed up. You let her get closer to you than any girlfriend in their right mind would find acceptable. You know it, I know it - and I'm pretty sure she knows it too if the look on her face when I answered the door just now was anything to go by."

Pulling her hand out of his grasp, she folded her arms across her chest and fixed him with a piercing stare. "So be a man and do the right thing," she said, "Or don't and watch me walk out of your life for good. It's as simple as that."

A little taken aback by this display of fighting spirit from his usually mild-mannered girlfriend, Danny would rather have pulled the covers over his head and gone back to sleep, but instead he reluctantly got up and started to get dressed, knowing that he couldn't put off the unpleasant task any longer.

"So - are you asking me to completely cut her off?" he enquired as he tugged on his boxers and jeans.

Lindsay shook her head. "No," she replied, "Although a big part of me wants to, believe me. What I'm asking is for some proper boundaries to be set, that's all. There was never anything wrong with you being her friend, Danny. It was dropping everything whenever she picked up the phone that was the issue. How many dates did you cancel on me because she called you, huh?"

Danny dropped his gaze guiltily, "I…"

"Too many," Lindsay cut in reproachfully. "And one of them was my birthday in case you've forgotten. I know that there are guys out there that don't remember things like that, but I also know that you're not normally one of them. It hurt that I was so little in your thoughts, Danny. It hurt a lot."

"I know," Danny admitted on a regretful sigh, "And I'm sorry, truly I am. I should make it up to you, shouldn't I? Take you out somewhere special or somethin'?"

Lindsay shook her head. "What's done is done. You can't take it back now. I don't need some grand gesture anyway. I just need you to put me first from now on - that's not too much to ask, is it?"

Hooking her around the waist, Danny drew her close and rested his forehead against hers. "It's not too much to ask, no," he assured her with gruff sincerity. "It's the least you deserve after everything I've put you through lately."

Lindsay cupped the sides of his neck in her hands, her palms warm and soft against his skin. "Then we don't have a problem, do we?" she said before she closed the gap between them and pressed her lips to his.

"Put a shirt on," she instructed curtly when they drew apart a few moments later.

He threw her an amused smile. "Yes ma'am!"

"It's distracting!" she told him with a censorious frown. "And I don't want her ogling what's mine either," she added harshly, her brown eyes flashing with barely concealed contempt.

That brought Danny back to reality with a bump and his sunny expression faded. He couldn't blame her for being so paranoid, but it saddened him that it had come to this. One of the things that had always made his relationship with Lindsay so easy was the fact that she wasn't the clingy type. She was sassy and independent and therefore didn't need or want him as her beck-and-call boy like some of his previous girlfriends had.

He'd put a major dent in her self-esteem with his behaviour towards her over the past few weeks though, and now it was up to him to smooth things out before her possessiveness became a real problem for the two of them. It was that realisation more than anything that gave him the motivation to finally go and do what was necessary as far as Rikki was concerned. It wouldn't be pleasant, but it had to be done - for his own peace of mind as well as for Lindsay's.

Running a conciliatory hand over his girlfriend's cap of honey-brown hair, he leaned in and pressed a light kiss to her cheek. "I love you," he declared softly.

"Jesus – don't cry!" he exclaimed when her brown eyes immediately filled with tears in response to his quiet avowal.

"I'm sorry, I just…" Lindsay sniffed and wiped her forefingers under her eyes to gather up the salty moisture there. "I'd convinced myself that I'd lost you and then last night happened…" She looked down at her feet. "It reassured me that you still wanted to be with me, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have doubts about you following through."

Danny shot her a resigned look as he pulled on his shirt and began to fasten the buttons. "You don't think very much of me right now, do you?" he remarked despondently.

Lindsay sighed. "I think you want to be everything to everyone, but that isn't going to work here, Danny. You have to make a choice one way or the other. If you don't, I don't know how we're gonna survive this. I love you but love doesn't automatically equal trust, you know. You have to prove to me that you're worthy of my faith before I can offer it to you unconditionally."

He nodded. "I know and I will, I promise," he said earnestly. "I let my guilt about Ruben eat me up inside, but I didn't just hurt myself with that, I hurt you too and that was something I never wanted to do."

"I know you didn't," Lindsay said quietly, "And it's not only your fault that things got so bad between us either - I should have told you how I was feeling a whole lot sooner. I didn't because I didn't want to make things worse for you, but I ended up making it worse for both of us, didn't I?"

Danny shot her a wry, lopsided smile. "We're one hell of a pair, huh?"

"I hope so," Lindsay responded quietly, her brown eyes soft and reflective. "To be considered the other half of your whole is all I've ever wanted, you know. Let's try and get back to where we used to be, shall we?"

Danny nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me, babe," he softly concurred. "Sounds like a plan to me."

**OOOOOO**

_**Meanwhile, in the other room…**_

Staring contemplatively down into her cooling cup of coffee, Rikki sighed heavily - how had everything gotten so turned on its head in a matter of days, she wondered.

Tuning out the sounds of murmured conversation from the other room, she let her gaze wander the rest of the apartment, but quickly wished she hadn't – the signs of brunch in the making only brought home to her just how Danny and his perky partner must have spent the previous evening. She had been around enough to know that you didn't have breakfast at 10.30AM unless you'd missed out on a significant amount of sleep, for example.

Irrational jealousy gripped her like a vice around her heart. Danny had never been hers to have, but she felt unfairly usurped all the same. He'd been there for her whenever she needed him before she'd left for Maine, but now it seemed she'd been deposed by the girlfriend who had only appeared to be a peripheral part of his life up until now. What had happened to change that, she mused. Or had she simply been blind to the true situation all along?

"Hey Rikki!"

Danny's heavily accented voice interrupted her musings and she looked up to see him standing in the doorway with Lindsay hovering like a tiny bodyguard by his side. "You're back early," he remarked in a carefully casual tone.

"Yeah I…" She broke off and swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. "It all got a bit too much, you know?" she said, willing him to understand her predicament. "You're the only one who really understands what I'm going through right now. Everybody else just doesn't seem to get it."

"I don't think that's true," Danny told her quietly. "Your Mom and Dad lost a grandson, your brother his only nephew. Their loss may not be as deep as yours, but it's a lot more profound than mine. You should have given them a chance to be there for you."

She stared at him in shock. "I thought you'd understand," she told him in a wounded tone.

Danny sighed. "I do understand, Rikki, honestly I do, but this…" He gestured awkwardly between them. "It's gone too far. It isn't helping either of us to come to terms with what happened. It's only making things worse."

"Why? Because _she_ says so?" Rikki said, gesturing bitterly towards Lindsay.

"Not only her, Flack too," Danny responded calmly, even though his stomach was twisting into painful knots inside. "And they're right. You can't make me the centre of your life, Rikki, you just can't. I don't… I..." He sighed before forcing himself to admit the painful truth. "I care about you as a friend, but that's as far as it goes. You need to understand that."

Rikki shook her head in stunned disbelief. "Quite a speech," she remarked acidly, "Did she write it for you?"

"No, that was all his own words," Lindsay cut in coolly before Danny could respond. "And he did it a whole lot more eloquently than I was expecting him to."

"So you did manipulate him into this then," Rikki accused.

Lindsay bit back the obvious retort about pot and kettles and shook her head in denial. "No," she said. "No, I didn't. All I did was finally tell him how hurt I felt about him pushing me away and not letting me be there for him. It was his choice to make the changes necessary for our relationship to get the proper attention it deserves. As for you - whatever hell you're going through right now, it doesn't give you the right to encroach on someone else's boyfriend. Some things are unacceptable regardless of the circumstances."

"And yet you seem to think it's perfectly okay to deny a grieving mother her only means of comfort," Rikki retorted hotly.

Lindsay's expression hardened. "Look - do me a favour, honey, and don't even go there, okay? That kind of emotional blackmail is not on anymore, you hear me? What happened to your son was a terrible tragedy and I'm truly sorry for your loss, but that kind of talk puts unfair responsibility onto Danny for something that was never his fault. I don't mean to be harsh, but from what Sid told me, Danny couldn't have saved Ruben even if he had realised what had happened and gone after him. His injuries were simply too severe. Medical help would never have gotten there on time."

"Lindsay…" Danny reached out and put a restraining hand on her forearm, but she resolutely shook off.

"No, you both need to hear this," she told him vehemently. "You need to understand it up here." She reached up and tapped his temple with her forefingers. "To accept it in here." She placed her palm flat over his chest to further emphasise her point. "How are you going to move on if you don't?"

"You think it's possible to move on from this?" Rikki demanded.

"I think you must be going through hell right now," Lindsay answered, "And I imagine it's going to take you a long, long time to recover. But there is no way on earth that I'm going to stand by and let you drag Danny down with you."

"And I don't believe for a second he's your only means of comfort either," she went on. "I went to Ruben's memorial service and it's clear you have friends and family who I'm sure understand you a whole lot better than Danny does. I mean you barely even knew each other before this happened, did you? You were friendly acquaintances, nothing more. He's guilted himself into being your shoulder to lean on and you've let him because you need something solid to hold onto right now. I don't blame you for that, honestly I don't, but it has to stop, you've gotta see that. He has a girlfriend. He can't keep playing knight-in-shining-armour to you and expect that relationship to survive."

She turned to Danny, whose blue eyes were suspiciously moist at her passionate outburst on his behalf. "I really think it's time you offered her the professional help that you should have arranged for her in the first place," she told him seriously. "That way maybe both of you can finally start to heal."

Danny nodded and reached out to gently cup her face in silent gratitude before he turned his attention to the now openly sobbing Rikki. "Rikki – look at me," he said, moving forward and taking her shaking shoulders in her hands.

"Don't do this," she pleaded with him. "Please don't!"

"I have to," he told her regretfully. "Lindsay's right – I'm not the person to help you through this."

"So who is then? I have no-one else."

"Yes you do, you have your family. Go and spend some proper time with them like they wanted you to. If you open yourself up to them more then I'm sure they'll provide you with the support that you need. They love you, Rikki, and love is the greatest healer in my experience."

"You don't understand, they want me to move back to Maine. But that isn't what I want, my home is here now."

"They want to be there for you, that's all. It's understandable given what you're going through, but it's your choice where you live in the end. Whatever you decide, I think you should get in touch with a support group for bereaved parents. I can get you the names and numbers of the groups based here in New York, but there'll be similar organisations in Maine too. I'm sure talking to people who have gone through a similar experience will help."

"I don't know whether that's the right thing for me, Danny," Rikki protested. "I don't think I could confide in strangers."

Danny shook his head at her continued resistance. "Look, let's be blunt here, Rikki, huh? You're not coping and you need extra help. Help that I can't offer. There's specialist counselling too if you feel that'd be more appropriate for you?"

"Just talking to you is enough; I wish you'd understand that."

Danny sighed. "Tell me honestly – is it any better today than it was the day Ruben died?"

Rikki's silence was his answer and he pushed on sensing a chink in her armour. "I didn't think so. We've been feeding each other's grief and not in a healthy way either. It's taken witnessing the hurt that I've caused to the woman I love to make me realise that, but now that I have, there's no going back. I'm happy to be your friend, Rikki, but I won't sacrifice everything else in my life to do it."

"You'll change your mind when she's not around to put all this pressure on you," Rikki told him confidently.

Danny resolutely shook his head. "No, no, I won't," he insisted. "I've caused Lindsay enough pain; I'm not going to deliberately cause her any more."

"But you're prepared to cause me pain?"

Danny sighed. "It maybe a cliché but sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind. You'll understand that in time, Rikki."

"Well, if that's the way it is then there's nothing left to say then is there," Rikki cried. Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. "Goodbye Danny. It's been nice knowing you."

"I'll drop round those support group phone numbers when I have them," he called out after her.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," she said before she pointedly let the door shut behind her with an emphatic slam.

"Dammit!" Danny sank down on the sofa and buried his face in his hands.

Sitting down beside him, Lindsay wrapped her arms around his hunched shoulders. "She'll come around eventually," she assured him. "She's just having trouble facing the truth. It's got to be a bit like jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute, but she'll accept help when she's ready to, I'm sure of it."

"I know," he mumbled into his hands. "I know. It doesn't make it any better right now though does it?"

"You're not going to hate me for this, are you?" Lindsay asked him as he lifted his ravaged face to meet her concerned gaze.

Danny shook his head. "No, no - I feel like the king of insensitive jerks right now, but to be brutally honest, I'm also kind of relieved too."

Lindsay cupped his grizzled cheek in her hand. "It was a burden that wasn't yours to carry, you know that right?"

He nodded. "I guess I'm finally starting to accept that, yes," he told her before his lips quirked up into a small smile. "What's got into you anyway? Talk about Momma bear in action."

Lindsay laughed. "I'm on your side, always have been. I'm just learning to be a bit more proactive about it, that's all."

"Well, for the record, I think I like it," he said as he drew her into all-encompassing hug, his chest growing tight with emotion.

"Glad to hear it," she returned a little teary-eyed herself.

"So, are you hungry?" she asked him when they broke apart some time later.

"Starving," Danny told her, a mischievous glint entering his eye.

"I meant for food!" she squealed when he moved swiftly to up-end her over his shoulder, his hand clamped brazenly over her butt.

The relaxed freedom in Danny's subsequent laughter was like music to Lindsay's ears. "I know," he said as he carried her over to the kitchen and deposited her back on her feet. Sliding onto a stool at the counter, he cupped his chin in his hands and gazed at her expectantly. "I wanna watch you cook for me," he told her.

"That's kinda sexist, Tarzan," she reproved.

He shot her a pointed look. "Right, so you had a shower and then dressed yourself back in my t-shirt as what, huh, Jane? A fashion statement?"

She giggled, her cheeks blushing a rosy pink. "Touché," she declared, and then felt sudden emotion prickle at the backs of her eyelids.

"I'm so glad you're back," she told him softly as she blinked back the threatening tears. "I really thought I'd lost you."

"Well, you haven't," he assured her, reaching over the counter for her hand. "I'm here and I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

She smiled. "I'm gonna hold you to that you know," she warned him.

He returned her smile. "Works for me, babe," he told her approvingly. "In actual fact, I'm counting on it..."

_**To be continued… **_


	6. Promises

**SOMETHING WORTH FIGHTING FOR**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: '**_Are you just going to give up, or are you going to fight for what you want?' Some choice words from a family member spur Lindsay Monroe into action over her increasingly shaky relationship with a certain Danny Messer._

**Notes: **Hey! Sorry this story took forever to complete, but real life has just been crazy over the last few months. Here, finally, is the last episode – not sure I'm 100% happy with the finished result, but it's time to move on to other things. Hope you enjoy anyway! More Author's Notes at the end, but for now, on with the show...

**OOOOOO**

**Episode 6: Promises**

"So I was thinking…" Danny announced to his girlfriend one evening around three weeks later. They were sitting at the small table in Lindsay's apartment sharing a Chinese take-out that they'd picked up on their way home from work.

"Don't strain yourself," Lindsay quipped with a quirk of her lips as she speared another egg roll and brought it to her mouth.

"Ha-ha, very funny," Danny intoned drolly, playfully crossing his eyes at her.

She laughed and he shot her a full-blown smile in response. "So, you were thinking…" she prompted after a brief pause.

He nodded. "Yeah - I was thinking that I should probably start looking for a new place."

Lindsay's heart skipped a beat at that. Danny living across the hall from the woman who had so effectively come between them was something that she was decidedly uncomfortable with. Asking him to leave the apartment that he'd searched high and low for though… well, she'd have been well within her rights under the circumstances, but she'd bitten her tongue and chosen to leave the decision to him instead. It seemed that her show of faith had reaped its hoped-for reward.

"Oh?" she said lightly.

On the surface, she sounded nonchalant, but Danny hadn't missed the flash of relief in her eyes at his announcement. Relations between the two of them had steadily improved over the past few weeks, but there was still a barrier there and he knew a big factor in that was his continued proximity to Rikki Sandoval. Not that he'd seen all that much of his neighbour recently - she was still smarting over his rejection the morning she'd returned from visiting her family in Maine. As promised, he'd passed on the details of a couple of bereaved parents' support groups, as well as the names and numbers of several grief counsellors that the NYPD recommended in cases like hers too. Unfortunately, she'd been anything but grateful for the information.

"It's just a convenient way for you to pass the buck, Danny," she'd told him acidly when he'd dropped around with the details. "It means you don't have to deal with me anymore, and keeps your precious girlfriend sweet in the process too - which of course is the most important thing in all of this, isn't it?" she finished with a sarcastic lilt to her voice.

Her tone was bitter and resentful, and Danny had had to supress the urge to sigh, knowing that it would only make the situation worse. This wasn't who she was, but his refusal to remain her permanent shoulder to lean on had turned her anger over her son's senseless death into something more visceral. She'd painted herself as the white-as-snow victim in all of this whereas Lindsay – his sweet, gentle Lindsay - was cast as the evil villainess. He, of course, was the man who was too weak to stand up for what was right – at least in Rikki's eyes anyway.

Keeping Lindsay happy _was _the most important thing to him right now, he freely admitted that, but not in the way that his neighbour implied. He had a lot of making up to do and he was damn well going to prove that he was worthy of the faith that his girlfriend had placed in him. As for Rikki – well, the way she'd reacted to his decision only strengthened his belief that he was doing the right thing where she was concerned.

The guilt he felt over Ruben's death was slowly receding. Talking things over with Lindsay was helping a lot. He was able to put things into better perspective now that he didn't have to deal with the weight of Rikki's grief every single day. He had somebody by his side who both understood what he was going through, but also provided a voice of reason when the guilt and grief got too much.

Which it often did - like when he'd witnessed the tears in Rikki's eyes after he'd dropped the information leaflets around, for instance. It had taken all of his strength not to pull her into his arms, assure her everything was going to be okay, and vow that he'd be there for her no matter what. Only the memory of Lindsay's tears that fateful night at the restaurant had held him back.

It galled him to think that, even after everything had happened, he was still skating so close to the edge where his relationship was concerned. Lindsay had been right when she'd said that he wanted to be everything to everyone. He did want that, which was why this move was necessary. He had to remove himself from the situation before he reached out for that fateful apple and took an irreversible bite.

Lindsay Monroe was unlike any other woman he'd ever met, that was the thing. She stirred emotions within him that no-one else had, and he guessed that's why he'd initially been reluctant to rely on her for support. He'd never really had his heart broken, but she had the potential to shatter it into tiny pieces and that lack of control over his emotions was something that he had struggled to deal with. It was sink or swim now though. All or nothing. He could either run away from his fears or he could face them head on. It was his choice in the end and it was time to take the proverbial bull by the horns and make it.

Sucking in a deep breath, he lifted his gaze to look Lindsay directly in the eye. "I need a fresh start," he told her, "Partly because of what happened with Ruben, but also because of us too."

"Us?" she questioned, not properly understanding what he was getting at.

"Yeah – my place?" He shot her a wry smile. "It's a bit of a bachelor pad, isn't it? And I don't think you're particularly comfortable with me living there anymore, are you?" he added quietly.

"With good reason," she pointed out, her eyes hardening to slivers of flint.

"With good reason," he acknowledged with a conciliatory incline of his head, "Which is why I've decided to look for somewhere else," he concluded.

Lindsay looked away from those piercing blue eyes for a moment, struggling to contain the myriad of emotions whirling like a cyclone inside her chest. Despite the fact that Danny was back and properly present in her life, it was still hard to forget the weeks of uncertainty that she'd suffered as a result of his questionable quest for redemption. Trust was not an easy thing for her to bestow right now. Several times over the past few weeks she'd questioned whether continuing with their relationship was even worth the effort. The storm had passed, but the debris left behind would take a long time to clear away.

Had the situation with Rikki been a sign, she wondered. Was God telling them that they weren't right for each other, and that they should just quit while they were ahead and not rush headlong into almost certain disaster? Or was it simply a test to see whether they had what it took to make it stick? She didn't know, but her heart wanted it to be the latter and she wasn't ready to give up on that possibility just yet.

She returned her gaze to Danny's, her eyes betraying her confusion but also telegraphing her continued hope for their future. "Thank you," she said, not really knowing what else to say.

His eyes steady on hers, Danny reached out to gently touch her cheek with his fingertips. "Least I could do," he told her gruffly, and then let his hand drop away from her face.

"So – will you help me look?" he asked after a beat, digging into a carton of spicy noodles with his chopsticks as he attempted to lighten the heavy mood a little.

"Sure," she agreed, "Although it's you who has to live there so it has to be your choice in the end."

"Yes," he concurred, "But I figured I should probably look for somewhere with future potential so it's important that you like it too."

Lindsay's face softened into a smile. "Oh and why's that?" she asked him.

"Do I hafta spell it out for ya?"

She coyly dipped her gaze, looking up at him through lowered eyelashes. "It'd be nice," she admitted candidly.

"Do I gotta get down on bended knee too?" he teased.

She blushed a delightful rosy red. "Danny!"

He laughed and then shuffled his chair closer to hers, reaching out for her hand. "Lindsay 'Montana' Monroe?" he intoned solemnly. "Will you consider the fact that maybe - at some undetermined time in the future – that you might, just might, want to move in with me?"

"Only move in?" she teased, her brown eyes dancing with mischief.

"One step at a time, babe," he told her with a self-deprecating smile. "I may have turned over a new leaf here, but I'm still getting used to the life-style change."

She leaned forward and gently kissed him. "I like that you're thinking like this," she said, "But let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay?"

He sat back in his chair and gazed at her sadly. "I really messed things up, didn't I?" he said resignedly.

"Yeah, you really did," she confirmed bleakly. "It can't ever be the same, Danny, however much you might want it to be."

"Perhaps it would be easier if we just walked away then," he said a little petulantly.

"Perhaps it would," she agreed calmly, "But is that what you really want?"

He shook his head, his fit of childish pique gone before it had even begun. "No, no, it's the last thing that I want."

"Well, I guess we just keep soldiering on until it comes good, or until one of us no longer feels that way then, don't we?"

Danny stared at her, realising that he'd been horribly naïve in assuming that an apology for his recent behaviour would be enough. Things weren't going to return to the way they used to be any time soon. The way ahead was fraught with unknowns and it left him wondering what other curveballs life had in store for them. He supposed all he could do was hang on in there and see where they ended up…

**OOOOOO**

_**Several months later…**_

Lindsay stared at the white plastic stick in her hand and felt her heart drop into her stomach. She couldn't be. It was unfathomable, not to mention the worst timing ever. She dropped her head between her knees as a wave of dizziness washed over her.

The last few months had been an emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions. She and Danny had had some extremely bad times intermingled with moments of genuine bliss – one of which had obviously led to the two pink lines telling her in no uncertain terms that she was about to become a mother whether she liked it or not.

Forgiveness had come relatively easily, but forgetting had not. Despite Danny having moved into a different neighbourhood, Rikki hadn't completely disappeared from their lives. Until a few weeks ago, she'd rung him with worrying regularity and he had often struggled with maintaining the appropriate emotional distance - one or two times he'd even bowed to the pressure and gone over to comfort her, something that Lindsay had found extremely difficult to accept. It wasn't easy for her to trust him when the other woman was still such a fixture in their lives. She knew that eventually she would have to put her foot down, tell him that the boundaries that she'd asked him to set were not enough, that it was her or Rikki – period.

Somewhat to her surprise though, he'd made that call himself around six weeks ago. She didn't yet know why, but it had come without any prompting from her. He'd told Rikki that enough was enough, that they couldn't be a part of each other's lives anymore. He'd changed his cell phone number, cut all ties and, so far, the cuckoo in their nest had left them in peace. It was as if a great weight had been lifted off their shoulders and their rocky relationship had improved in leaps and bounds as a result. In fact she would even go as far as to say that they were happy again, except that it all still felt a little bit tenuous. It was more like the ethereal sense of a dream coming true rather than a solid, unshakeable reality and that meant that she couldn't yet relax, however hard she tried to put their painful past behind her and move on.

A sharp rap on the bathroom door cut through her reverie then and she felt her heart bump inside her chest in reaction. "Babe? You okay in there?" Danny's voice was muffled by the wood of the door.

She looked down at the pregnancy test in her hand. Define okay, she thought wearily, and then made a vain attempt to put her scattered thoughts into some kind of order. Oh god, how was she supposed to tell him about this? I mean it wasn't as if they'd planned it, was it? In fact, it was the last thing that they needed right now. How would he react, she wondered. He seemed happy with their renewed connection, but she did occasionally worry that she had forced him down a road that he wasn't quite ready for. And why had he cut ties with Rikki so suddenly anyway? Had something happened that she didn't know about?

She sighed. There were so many questions - questions that she didn't have the answers to right now, and she needed those answers because without them she was in a perpetual state of limbo. Her hand strayed to her still flat stomach – there was a new life stirring in there, just a bunch of dividing cells at present, but a tiny human being nonetheless. How was she supposed to make perhaps the biggest decision of her life when things between her and Danny were still so up in the air? She didn't know, but she was about to find out because there was no getting away from it now. Hurriedly hiding the positive test in one of the bathroom drawers, she sucked in a couple of calming breaths and then opened the door to her worried boyfriend.

"Are you okay?" Danny asked her. She looked pale, he noted. There was something going on with her, but he'd be damned if he knew what it was. Every time he asked if she was alright, she responded with a singularly unenlightening 'I'm fine' and his confusion only grew.

Seeing the naked worry on his face, Lindsay found herself wanting to tell him the truth, but at the last moment she baulked and chose to side-step the issue instead. "I'm fine," she assured him and felt her heart sink as his expectant expression fell.

Without warning, her stomach pitched with nausea reminding her that she was anything but fine. She was pregnant, for god's sake. She was going to have Danny Messer's baby. Now that her suspicions were confirmed, how much longer could she reasonably keep it a secret from him?

"I need to eat," she said, hurrying towards the kitchen before her body betrayed her. Sipping delicately at a glass of milk, she busied herself with slicing some bread for toast, which was about the only the thing she thought she could keep down right now.

"You want eggs with that?" Danny asked her innocently as he moved towards the refrigerator.

The very thought made her want to projectile vomit, but she somehow managed to win the battle with her protesting stomach and thankfully keep the sickness at bay. Nibbling at the corner of a piece of bread to stave off the roiling nausea, she shook her head. "No, no, I'm good."

She could tell he wasn't convinced by her assurances, but he chose to let it go, not wanting to push when her body language was screaming at him to leave it alone. It didn't exactly make for a very relaxing atmosphere however - the intense quiet that had descended gradually grew more awkward as time went on.

Eventually, Lindsay could stand it no longer and felt compelled to break the impasse. "Why did you break off communication with Rikki like that?" she demanded of him as they sat at the kitchen table eating their respective breakfasts. It came out a lot blunter than she intended, but she figured that wasn't such a bad thing. It forced him to respond rather than find a way to avoid the issue. She was aware that that was something of the pot calling the kettle black, but damn it, she needed to know!

Slowly chewing on a mouthful of bacon and eggs, Danny took his sweet time in replying. It was a question he'd been expecting her to ask sooner or later, but that didn't make answering it any easier. "I just…" He set his fork down and dragged his fingers through his hair. "I… I kind of lied to you about Rikki," he confessed in a rush.

A finger of ice stiffened her spine. "What do you mean?" she asked him, her voice strained, her expression taut with suspicion.

"Not that," he quickly assured her, seeing which direction her thoughts had travelled. "It's just that the last time I went over to see her, we ended up having a huge row about it and I wanted to avoid that happening again so when she called me…"

"You conveniently failed to mention it?" Lindsay interrupted coolly.

Danny sighed. "No, no, I told you she'd called – eventually anyway. I wasn't initially going to, but in the end I couldn't bring myself to keep it from you. It felt so wrong and afterwards I hated that I'd even contemplated it in the first place. That was when I decided that enough was enough. It was time to make a choice and… and well, I chose you."

"Why?"

He blinked. It wasn't the response he was expecting, he'd been braced for her wrath rather than her questions. He reached out for her hand, needing some kind of physical contact to reassure him that they hadn't just taken a giant leap backwards after so many positive steps forward.

She abruptly pulled it back, which didn't exactly ease his fears. "Just answer the question, Danny," she told him sharply.

"Because not having you in my life…" He broke off and shook his head, trying to figure out how to put what he felt into words. It was something he always found difficult and this time was no different to any other. "Well, it would just be torture," he continued, "Whereas not seeing Rikki anymore is more of a relief if you want to know the truth."

It was hardly a declaration of undying love, Lindsay mused, but at least it was honest. Things were difficult between the two of them right now, but being together was infinitely preferable to being apart. Adding an unexpected pregnancy into that volatile mix though… well, she figured she needed to come to terms with her own feelings about that before she approached Danny with it. She hated that they couldn't share it in the way that they should, but she was realistic enough to accept that there was a possibility that she could end up doing this alone. She would keep the news to herself until she'd settled things in her own mind therefore.

Of course, she soon discovered that was easier said than done. It was amazing how many lies you had to tell to keep something like this under wraps. The longer she kept her pregnancy from him, the harder it was to confess the truth and in the end he found out in a way that she'd never wanted. He'd caught her out during a visit to the clinic – an encounter from which she'd bolted because she'd panicked and hadn't known what else to do.

And then to add to all that, when he'd eventually cornered her in the locker-room later, she'd just blurted it out without any build-up and had proceeded to get upset by his less than reassuring response. Once she'd calmed down a little, she realised that she was being unfair though. She'd dropped this on him from a great height with little or no warning. She owed him some time to come to terms with it.

_Ding! Dong! _

Her heart flip-flopped as her doorbell rang. It was Danny; she knew it without even having to look through the peep-hole. He'd kept his distance ever since she'd told him about the baby, but they couldn't avoid each other forever. This wasn't just about them anymore. There was so much more at stake now. She paused a moment to gather her thoughts and then crossed the room and opened the door to the man waiting on the other side.

"Hey!" Danny shot her a nervous smile as the door swung back.

"Hey!" she returned, her voice as shaky and uncertain as his.

"We need to talk," he told her.

She shot him a look that said 'Oh, you think?' and that somehow made him feel a whole lot better. "So umm, can I come in?" he prompted when she remained frozen to the spot.

"Oh! Yeah, yeah…" She belatedly stepped aside and allowed him across the threshold. "Umm… do you want to…?" She trailed off. "We should probably sit," she decided. "Should we sit?" She looked at him for confirmation.

Danny nodded. "I think that might be a good idea," he said.

"I'm sorry," she blurted when they were seated, side by side, on the sofa. "I should have told you before now. It's just, I…"

She broke off when he leaned forward and placed a finger over her lips. "It's okay, there's no reason for you to apologise," he assured her. "I know why you didn't tell me. Don't get me wrong, it hurt when you said you didn't expect anything from me, but I understand why you feel that way. I've been an idiot. I handled the situation with Rikki all wrong. I wish I could go back and do it all again, but I can't and I…"

He looked down at his lap for a moment. "I can be the guy you want me to be, Lindsay," he told her earnestly. "We can make this work, I know we can. We just have to give it everything we've got from now on. No more sweeping things under the carpet, no more hiding from situations that we'd prefer to avoid."

He took both her hands in his. "Just give me a chance to prove it to you, sweetheart. Please."

The hint of desperation in his tone tugged at her heart-strings and the walls she'd put up to protect herself began to buckle. "Danny I… Look, I don't want you doing this just because I'm pregnant, okay? We can work something out with that if you're not ready for more."

"I know that, but babe, I _am_ ready."

"You sure?" Lindsay asked as hope blossomed like the first flowers of spring inside her chest.

He nodded and brought his hands up to cup her face. "I've done a lot of soul-searching over the past twenty-four hours and I promise you that I'm sure." He leaned his forehead against hers. "I won't let you down again, I swear," he vowed.

She'd still had her doubts back then, it had to be said, but she'd swallowed her apprehension and taken a chance on the long shot nonetheless. And so it was that six and a half months later, an exhausted but overjoyed Lindsay Monroe-Messer looked down at the mewling new-born in her arms and felt the last of the missing jigsaw pieces of her life finally fall into its rightful place.

It hadn't all been plain sailing since that night, but they'd made it through the storm to the calmer waters beyond and had the wedding bands on their fingers and the gorgeous bundle in her arms to prove it. Against all the odds, they'd stuck together and were now a family in every definition of the word. She bent to kiss her new-born daughter's tiny brow, and then looked over at her equally ecstatic husband and smiled - a beautiful, tearful but above all happy smile.

Reaching up a hand, she drew his face down to hers. "Thank you," she whispered against his lips just before they met his.

"For what?" he asked, shooting her a quizzical look. "I'm thinking it's you who did all the hard work here, babe."

She smiled. "Too right, buddy," she agreed, "But you played your part." She kissed him again. "You kept your promise," she reminded him. "You didn't let me down."

He dipped his head and stole a third kiss and then drew back stroked the tip of his finger over his daughter's chubby cheek. "To think I could have missed this," he mused contemplatively.

"But you didn't, that's the point."

Danny nodded. "She's beautiful and so – Mrs Messer - are you."

Lindsay giggled. "I agree with the first part of that sentiment but the latter? Did you forget to put your contacts in this morning or something? I probably look like a big, sweaty, bloated mess right now."

He sat back a little and studied her with objective eyes, taking in her slightly more rounded face, her flushed cheeks and messy, sweat-dampened hair. Her eyes were red-rimmed and tired, but were sparkling with elation nevertheless. She glowed, that was the only way he could describe it. "I didn't forget my contacts," he assured her as he bent to kiss her again.

She smiled as they drew apart. "You've haven't lost that famous Messer charm either," she quipped and then glanced down at the now sleeping baby in her arms. "What are we going to call her?" she asked him.

"I told you before – Lucy."

"We agreed that Lydia was also in the running, remember?"

"You agreed; I didn't." He grinned as she frowned at him. "We could rock, paper, scissors for it?" he suggested.

"We are not going to pick our daughter's name on a game of chance!" she told him indignantly.

He laughed. "Just a suggestion. Let's sleep on it, huh? See how we feel in the morning?"

Lindsay nodded. "Okay but I won't change my mind."

"Yeah you will," he told her confidently.

He was wrong, of course, she didn't. She wasn't that much of a pushover, but she was a woman who honoured a bet. So when scissors won out over paper that, as they say, was that…

The Messer family was born and a new chapter of their life together had finally begun…

**THE END **

**A/N2:** _The idea of this story was that it generally fits into the CSI NY canon, apart from side-stepping the events of 'Right Next Door' of course. That's why Danny and Lindsay's relationship when she discovers she's pregnant isn't all hearts and roses. Still they got there in the end, didn't they?_

_Hope you liked it. It's back to 'Hold Me Now' for me so hopefully you'll hear from me again soon. _

_Till then then... __CharmedBec x_


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